Propaganda comes of age

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Propaganda Comes

of Age

By MICHAEL CHOUKAS Foreword by Hadley Cantril

PUBLIC AFFAIRS PRESS, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Copyright 1965, by Public Affairs Press 419 New

Jersey Avenue,

S.E., Washington

3, D. C.

Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-27072

PREFACE Every book is a bit of impertinence—an imposition.

reader’s attention and time. It demands to be read.

It calls for the

Every author thus is an intruder, for he invades a person’s privacy; and if he is honest with the reader, or with himself, he must at least

offer an explanation for his audacity. In the process, he may perhaps succeed in cleansing himself of any sense of guilt and thereby regain his moral freedom. Sometimes the task of moral liberation is not especially difficult. This is particularly so when the author’s thoughts are not of himself alone but stirred by something larger—his society’s values and ideals, its problems and perplexities. In such a case, the author’s impertinence may be considerably lightened by a sense of obligation to speak. Both at home and abroad our society is in a crisis, has been for some time, and from all indications will remain in such a state for some time

to come. In domestic affairs we are frustrated because we are daily subjected to a barrage of propaganda—from extremists of the left and right, from big business and big labor, and even from governmental institutions—to such an extent that it is all but impossible to ascertain what is truth and what is fiction, what is believable and what is spurious. In the arena of world affairs we face powerful adversaries who use every conceivable means to mislead and confuse not only us but also their own people. As ruthless as they are fanatical, these adversaries will stop at nothing in order to advance the Communist cause. In their hands propaganda is one of the deadliest of weapons. In large part our frustrations and difficulties, as a people and a nation, are due to our relative ignorance about the role of propaganda in these tense and trying times. It is with the hope of arousing awareness and understanding of the ramifications of this phenomenon that the present work has been prepared. In these pages I endeavor to show its true nature, its techniques, and its relation to democracy for good and for ill. My definition of propaganda, it will be noted, is based on characteristics common to all products of propaganda. To sharpen the reader’s understanding of the phenomenon, an account is given of its historical development, especially its evolutionary character. This is followed by an exposition of the principles underlying all propagandistic activity which in their totality constitute a philsophy of propaganda.

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Propaganda

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It is in the light of this general conceptual frame of reference that the discussion of the major techniques of propagandists which follows takes place. This in a sense constitutes the main body of the book, for in the techniques which have been devised to create illusion the full magnitude of propaganda as an instrument of manipulation and social control is revealed. A discussion of propaganda’s relation to democracy closes the book, considering the problem in terms of both its national and international ramifications. Scattered throughout the book are a large number of examples that point up a principle or illustrate a technique. Some of these examples have been drawn from World War II for several reasons. It was during that war that modern propaganda came into being. True, the previous war had its propagandists as well. They, like those of past ages, however, were empirical performers, shooting mostly in the dark and relying heavily on a fertile imagination. They lacked professional training, the modern media of communication, and at times the support of various branches of their respective governments. They were in the same stage of development as our pre-war advertising men and public relations counsels. It was World War II that spawned the professional propagandist and equipped him with all the necessary means for coordinated and sustained propaganda campaigns. It is such planned activity that contains patterns that reveal propaganda’s nature when analyzed. Now that that propaganda battle is over we can look back at it dispassionately, and with the perspective that the passing of time has given us, we may be able to deduce principles that are common to all propaganda whether of the enemy or ours. In short, not the illustrations per se but what they reflect within the context of that conflict is of primary significance for an understanding of propaganda. It is not without significance that much of the prejudice, bigotry and hatred that fester our relations at home and abroad had their origin in Nazi propaganda. Today many of the techniques used by Goebbel’s ministry are being employed even more effectively by our subsequent adversary, the Communists. A first step in our efforts to neutralize their effectiveness is recognition of that fact. History is, of course, a great teacher. We shall miss a great lesson if we neglected to recall what happens to a civilized society and a dynamic people when subjected to propagandistic manipulation such as the German people underwent; what they did to others, and what finally befell upon them. The old slogan “It can’t happen here” is as anachron-

Preface

v

istic under the conditions created by the availability of modern propaganda techniques as a large-scale hot war is in this nuclear age to those who possess nuclear weapons. The thoughts contained in this volume are not solely those of the author. They have been hammered and put into shape by the persistent questioning of generations of students; by discussions with dedicated co-workers during the war years in Washington and elsewhere; by stimulation and inspiration derived from the writings of the individuals referred to in the text; and by the amiable criticism of my colleagues, both in sociology and other fields of social science. My feeling of gratitude extends to all who have been helpful and in particular to James L. Farley whose editorial assistance has been inestimable. My thanks are also extended to the following publishers who have granted me permission to quote from their publications: Cambridge University Press, Doubleday & Co., Inc., Farrar Straus & Giroux, Inc., The Franklin Institute, Victor Gollancz, Ltd., Greystone Press, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., Houghton Mifflin Co., Island Press, Liveright Publishing Co., McGraw-Hill Book Co., The Macmillan Co., The M.I.T. Press, The Nation, Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., The New Republic, W. W. Norton Co., Oxford University Press, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Public Opinion Quarterly, The Rand Corporation, Random House, Vanguard Press, Inc., Ives Washburn, Inc., and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

MICHAEL rectnatur: Hanover, New Hampshire

Ji

a:

iW

FOREWORD One evening over 30 years ago when I was an instructor at Harvard, I gave a talk over a local Boston station on the subject of propaganda. The next day I got a telephone call from that grand old citizen, Edward A. Filene, saying he had listened to me and would I be willing to come over and spend an evening with him trying to figure out what he might do to help finance some small undertaking that would teach people how to think. So I spent a memorable evening with a memorable man sitting around the coal grate while we both thought out loud about the problem he posed. We were completely unsuccessful in our effort to formulate some modest program to do the positive thing he had wanted done. The upshot was that if we couldn’t do something worthwhile to teach people how to think we might at least do something to help teach them how not to think. The concrete result was the establishment of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis of which I served for a short time as its first president. Since those days much has been written on the subject of propaganda and much of it has been of excellent quality. But there cannot be too many good books on this subject. Although Professor Choukas is an academician, he writes with the background of a man who learned about and practiced propaganda first hand in an important position he held during World War IJ. This is a scholarly book without being ponderous. It is closely reasoned without being dull. It shows the long history of the use of propaganda in the western world, places propaganda today in its proper historical context, and differentiates the manifold forms of propaganda both of the past and the present. A most valuable feature of the present book is the rich illustrative material provided. The reader gets a feeling that in the midst of the principles and mechanisms Professor Choukas describes, his feet are always firmly on the ground and that he knows what he is talking about. While some readers may feel that more time should have been spent on Communist propaganda of the recent past, I personally believe that Professor Choukas does a special service for a large body of readers who were too young during World War II to remember what went on

and to focus our attention as he does on the massive and astute efforts of Nazi propagandists, reminding us of what we so recently experienced as a people and a nation and what we so easily tend to forget. The relationship of propaganda to democracy and the role of propawu

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Propaganda

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ganda within democracy is a theme considered throughout the book, a theme that will be argued and discussed for years to come by both students and laymen, a theme Professor Choukas handles with a skill and judgment that leaves us clearer in our minds as to where this important and almost inevitable force of propaganda fits into the total way of democratic life. The book is a most welcome addition to the literature on a most important subject. HADLEY

Princeton, N. J.

CANTRIL

CONTENTS Introduction The Sound of Many Voices By Any Other Name...

19

Propaganda Comes

39

of Age

The Rationale of Manipulation

62

Facets of Modern

Propaganda

78

Manipulation of the Individual

92

The Manufacture of Illusion

OTs

Playing on the Emotions

138

Ue

The Channeling of Action

172

gh

The Scope of Human Conduct

210

Lee

The Manipulation of Groups: Strategy and Tactics

218

Propaganda and the Democratic Society

2a)

References

PAsTe

13:

ABOUT

THE

AUTHOR

Michael Choukas is Professor of Sociology and Chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Dartmouth College. He holds a B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from Dartmouth, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Shortly

before

World

War

II he served

as a member

of the New Hampshire Committee on Morale. After the United States entered the war he moved to Washington where he held the position of Chief of Plans and Production of Morale Operations in the Office of Strategic Services.

He is the author of Black

Angels of Athos,

and

has

contributed numerous articles and book reviews to various journals and magazines.

CHAPTER

1

INTRODUCTION “Most of the harm in society is done with the elbows, not with the fists.".—C. H. Cooley, Social Organization.

Propaganda is one of the great shibboleths of our time. Taken merely as a spoken word it is pleasing to the ear. First come two staccato stabs, then an explosive and climactic third syllable, and then the final vowel which agreeably rounds out the cadence. Not to relish its mouth-filling ebullience is to confess oneself insensitive to the nuances of speech. But propaganda is more than a seductive word; it is a seductive idea, and especially so in the emotional climate of our day. There are many reasons why this is so, but foremost among them is the almost intolerable burden that the shattering impact of events has placed upon the common man. With cherished associations, standards, and values crashing down all around him, he is baffled, bewildered, and bewitched. In his quest

for something tangible, something he can clearly grasp and hold on to— a tenable position—he is daily confronted with a mass of contradictions which bombard him through the media of communication. Modern man searches for some key, some all-inclusive formula fit for heavy duty, by means of which he can comprehend this incredible era in which we live. But how can he find it, and where amidst this confusing din of conflicting doctrines and exhortations? At bottom, he is really offered only two alternatives: either to subscribe to one or another of these doctrines and label everything else propaganda; or, take shelter in a comforting but dangerous cynicism and proclaim everything that comes his way as polluted with propaganda. In the latter case, in an effort to escape the Scylla of gullibility, he is ensnared by the Charybdis of irresponsibility. In either case, his anxious concern about an omnipotent and ever-present propaganda tends to enfeeble and incapacitate him for his duties as a citizen of a democratic commonwealth. For both entail the surrender of one’s obligation, within such a society, to grow fully as a person, to strive and develop the one quality upon which, above all, the realization of the society itself has been predicated—namely, one’s rational faculties, one’s intelligence. Both the gullible and the irresponsible have shirked such responsibility. The position they have taken supplies

1

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Propaganda

Comes

of Age

them with a ready and perfect “out” whenever confronted by opinions or facts openly in opposition to their own. Labeling them propaganda, they reject them unconditionally and without much thought. Then there is the other side of the picture. The irrationalism and antiintellectualism generated by an exaggerated and vague understanding of the nature and power of propaganda are fed and reinforced from another direction—the propagandists themselves. Their success or failure depends upon the degree to which they manage to control and exploit the emotions and other irrational forces in man. Their motives, their techniques, the impact, direct or indirect of their work, all reveal this funda-

mental rule of their trade, as will be shown later in this book. And they are getting better and better at it from day to day. Events of recent years, particularly the second World War and the Cold War, have shown how resourceful and resilient, how systematic and thorough propagandists have become in the twentieth century. Nor have they been reluctant or slow in exploiting the ingenious machines of communication, incomparably more effective than those of an earlier and cruder technology. Whether directly (through the increasing application of systematic propaganda) or indirectly (by arousing exorbitant fears, anxieties, and suspicions), the mounting assault upon the minds of the general public must be blamed for the confusion and bewilderment that characterizes much of our contemporary thinking; also for many of our hysterical outbursts and clashes involving politics, economics, race relations or other important areas of our communal life. And were the pessimistic and dire pronouncements of some of our thinkers that the American dream, founded on the innate decency and rationality of man, is fading; or that Western civilization stands on the threshold of a new barbarism—were such ominous forebodings to prove accurate, undoubtedly much of the responsibility for such a calamity will have to be allotted to the unbridled and uncontrolled use of modern propaganda. Broad as the last statement may sound, there is sufficient evidence to justify it. The present work is the result of an attempt to compile such evidence and to view it in terms of the complexities and problems of modern life.

This book does not concern itself primarily with the many ugly manifestations of contemporary life: a rebellious youth and rampant juvenile delinquency, an inordinate amount of obscenity and vulgar taste in our literature, the debasing nature of much of the content flowing through our mass media (especially the movies, television, and advertising), or the heightened flames of bigotry and hatred accompanying any effort to advance the American dream of equality and self-realization regardless

Introduction

3

of race, creed, or class. Viewing these and other equally painful disturbances as effects more than causes, as symptoms of a much deeper ailment in our social structure, this book presents evidence intended to locate and bring to the surface

the immediate

source

of our troubles,

and in the

process describe the connection that may exist between that source and the continuing deliberate and systematic seduction of the minds of the American people. Put in equally broad terms, but in a simpler language, the questions that this work is addressed to are the following: Why does propaganda play a major role in the world in which we live? How did we get to where we are? Is there a way out? In seeking answers to these questions we must fall back on man’s past. Scattered throughout the pages of this book are historical references intended to supply both depth and perspective to the topics under consideration. Taken collectively, these references may be viewed as an over-all assessment, a philosophy of man’s development. As such, it supplies the frame of reference which imparts meaning to all comment. It is not a new philosophy, nor a universally accepted one. It is the one that Western man has been forging for the past twenty-five centuries. It is the very same one that has suffused the American dream with the vitality, the vigor, and the explosiveness that characterize all its efforts

to move forward and unfold. It is an optimistic philosophy. It is founded on an unshaken belief in the inherent decency and goodness of man; and in his proven capacity to overcome apparently insurmountable obstacles, even colossal failures and historic blunders that he has committed in his early fumbling efforts to cope with a world that he little understood, and march on to better and higher levels of existence. It is also a realistic philosophy. Its major assumptions about the nature of man, his innate decency, his indomitable

spirit, and his all-

conquering intelligence, and his place in the world, are evidently supported by mankind’s past. Man has marched; human progress is a historical fact. The trust thus invested in a continued onward development and higher human achievement has not been misplaced. It is realistic in still another sense. Like all social philosophies this too is a system of thought, a cluster of ideas providing motivation and direction to common social effort.

Consider Fascism, for instance.

The

efforts of its people had to be mobilized and directed toward the satisOr Communism, faction of the interests of the State, an abstraction. class, or an nebulous a is case its in reality social again. The assumed

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Propaganda

Comes

of Age

equally vague humanity; both abstractions of a higher order. Indeed, practically all social philosophies that man seems to have experimented with throughout history have had this fundamental weakness: a remote connection, and sometimes none whatsoever, between their overall objectives and the realities of a world which these philosophies were presumed to mirror, and reflect accurately. This weakness incidentally may explain why societies founded upon such philosophies flourished for a brief historical moment but sooner or later collapsed and vanished from the historical scene; and may also be pointing a finger in the direction that our contemporary rival, the Communist state, is destinedto go. Now, unlike these other social philosophies, the one that underlies the argument in this book—we may call it the American dream, or the democratic ideal—postulates that all collective effort and all the energies at the disposal of society should be thrown in the direction of the maximum development and realization of man’s innate potentialities. They should be directed toward man, the individual, that tanigble human being who

is the sole possessor of those qualities worthy of development. It is in this manner that the democratic philosophy is linked with reality, securely rooted in man’s own nature. Herein lie both its vigor and its enduring qualities as well as its high promise for the future. For by its very essence, it contains a potentially universal appeal extending both its rewards and promise to all men regardless of the differences of race, creed, nationality or class. Within this frame of reference an evaluation of propaganda is attempted in these pages after a detailed description of its nature, its history, and the techniques that characterize it. More specifically, it is hoped that the reader will find answers to a host of questions that arise inevitably when any discussion of propaganda is seriously undertaken, questions such as these: What really is propaganda? How should it be defined with a precision that would make it stand apart from other forms of publicity? Here one finds himself obliged to thread his way through a jungle of confusion as there is as yet no general agreement on this matter even among those who have been studying the subject for years. Why is there propaganda? How has it made its appearance in human affairs? Suggestions have been made that it derives from original human nature, that it arises inevitably out of man’s social relationships, that it flourishes only in periods of revolutionary change. How valid are these assertions? The task of detecting propaganda is as important as it is difficult. How

Introduction

5

can one recognize it? Are there any infallible touchstones or, at least, some dependable means of identifying it? Some commentators have defined propaganda as “veiled promotion.” Is concealment necessarily an element of propaganda? And if so, how far should this attribute be extended? Should it be sought in the source from which propaganda may emanate, the methods used by the propagandist, the content spread, the goals desired; or, perhaps, in all four? Can there be propaganda without furtiveness? Such line of reasoning leads invariably to another facet of the subject: Is there such a thing as unintentional propaganda? The social novel, the social drama, editorial bias and the like must, of course, be taken into

account. Still another pertinent question, possibly the one which has provoked most argument, and particularly strong protestations from the propagandists themselves, is this: Can there be good propaganda? The scientific student of propaganda must address himself to the problem of “good” propaganda; he must delve into the meaning and implications of that term “good.” Does good propaganda merely mean effective propaganda, or can propaganda be good from a larger point of view? And if so, whose point of

view?

Much of the argument centering around this question has been

rather complicated as well as vehement. This is partly due to the fact that whereas propaganda started out as an eminently respectable word, and remains such in many countries today, in our land it has picked up a sinister, evil connotation.

Another inescapable question involves education. What is the difference between propaganda and education? Here is a problem much more difficult than may appear on the surface. The assertion has been made that the educator teaches us how to think but the propagandist teaches us what to think.

How valid is this distinction; and how useful to sound and

fruitful thinking? Closely related to the distinction between education and propaganda is the matter of indoctrination. Is indoctrination synonymous with propaganda? Should the advocacy of theological doctrine, for example, be designated as propagandizing; or is there need here for still a further distinction? And what of secular types of indoctrination, such as totalitarian states engage in, or powerful special interest groups within our own society? How are they to be classified? Speaking of totalitarian systems, why is propaganda indispensable to totalitarianism? And, speaking of ourselves, why is it incompatible with democracy? The latter raises the further question: Since propaganda ap-

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of Age

parently is an ever-present activity in modern life, how much of this activity can a democratic society tolerate without endangering the democratic process? This book endeavors to supply the reader with some answers to these questions; or at least with factual material and views that may lead to such answers. That a great part of it is concerned with the telling of man’s rapacity and avarice, his brutality, even his bestiality at times, has been unavoidable in view of the subject matter that it deals with. This should not detract from or in any manner undermine our faith in a better future for man. The wreckage and the debris that an early groping humanity has left strewn in the path of history as a result of initial error and the devices it invented to perpetuate such error have been the price perhaps that an ignorant humanity has had to pay—a price that, however exorbitant it may appear when considered as an isolated item, shrinks into insignificance when measured agaist the achievements that past human effort has passed on from generation to generation. Again, it is in this that the future of man is indicated and foretold. For, if there is any general judgment about man that may be derived from our social philosophy, it is that man has been ignorant, but not stupid. In conclusion, it is hoped that this book, by bringing out into the open the true nature of propaganda and its ramifications, will at least help dispel uncertainty about and exaggerated fear of propaganda that seem to hover over many quarters of our society. We live in critical times, and every crisis breeds its terrors. We have much to fear, but does fear of an “omnipotent” propaganda help matters? It is a real question, indeed, whether it is not worse for an individual to come under the spell of the inordinate dread of propaganda than to be victimized by propagandists. There is a still further way in which it is hoped that this book will prove of some value. All efforts so far, legalistic or otherwise, to control propaganda or propagandists operating within our society have been more or less futile. This is understandable in view of the hitherto inadequate understanding of the subject. The attempt therefore to isolate propaganda from other promotional activities and to present it for what it is in all its nakedness may be of some assistance to those engaged in such effort; and in so doing it may lighten the task of those who publicly or in private are striving to advance the democratic process. For it is they who are working for a better tomorrow who may make it impossible in the future to be said of the Americans, as it has been said of the Greeks, that

they had caught a glimpse of the majesty of Man, but they too could not hold on to it but for a moment.

CHAPTER

THE

SOUND

2

OF MANY

VOICES

“Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”—-Genesis 11.

What precisely is propaganda? Propaganda ideas have been likened to bullets. Insofar as they both involve a sender and a potential receiver, insofar as they both possess what we might call velocity, the comparison is apt but grossly insufficient —almost dangerously so for a thorough understanding of the nature and effects of propaganda. A bullet once fired is spent, and even a child can pick it up and play with it safely. A propaganda idea persists, it is almost indestructible, and its lasting effects are frequently unpredictable. A story that circulated along the eastern seaboard during the last war ran as follows: A group of German prisoners were being transported across the Atlantic for allocation in the various prisoner camps here in the United States. These men had been highly impertinent, even arrogant, from the start of

their captivity. They were sure Germany was winning the war. They laughed with scorn at the sight of the hearty breakfast they were served the first day out, and shouted: “Americanische propaganda! Americanische propaganda!” The American officer in charge naturally became interested. He asked them to explain what they meant. They were only given what the average American, civilian or military, had for breakfast, he told them. ‘That’s it,” shouted one of them. “You think we are fools; that we'd believe food is so plentiful in your America. We know better.” The American officer gave up trying to convince them after a while.

He shrugged his shoulders in resignation and made what to him was a natural remark: “Wait till you see New York.” He was greeted with a shower of scornful cries: “New York! New York! You wouldn’t dare take us to New York. You wouldn’t dare show us the ruins of your skyscrapers. We've seen pictures of your New York in Germany.” It was early in the morning when the ship sailed calmly into New York harbor. The commanding officer ordered all the prisoners to line up on

is

8

Propaganda

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of Age

deck, so they could have a good view. He stood there smiling, and waited for their reaction. He saw wonderment and amazement lighting up their faces. He approached them, and calmly, but not without some satisfaction, he half-whispered to one of them: “What do you think of your Doctor Goebbels now?” “Goebbels,” the prisoner exclaimed. “What does Goebbels have to

do with this?” “What are you fellows wondering at then?” came back the officer, with some impatience and no little perplexity. “The American ingenuity!” retorted the prisoner. “Who would believe you could rebuild all these buildings in such a short time!” A more tangible piece of evidence of the way in which the human mind may be twisted by propagandistic ideas appeared in the New York Times in 1940. It read in part as follows: “, . The majority of the prisoners are obvious products of a propaganda machine which has dinned into German youth for seven years the suggestion that in their British opponents they are dealing with a ruthless and bitterly anti-German people who will show them no mercy. “All the more youthful Nazis display during the first hour or so after captivity extreme apprehension. The humanity and consideration shown in dressing their wounds and administering to their comfort produces surprise and bewilderment. “The offer of a drink is often regarded with the deepest suspicion and in many cases repeated reassurances have to be given that it is not a trick to poison him. “Even when prisoners eventually accept little kindnesses from their captors they remain grim, silent and suspicious for a long time, being obviously quite unable to accept decent treatment at its face value. They are convinced that the English live only to vent a fiendish hatred against all Germans.” * Thus do people’s minds get twisted by clever propaganda in times of war, or other crises. And the “enemy” is not the only one to succumb to such manipulation. We too have had our minds blunted, or bent in the direction our propagandists wanted them to go. There are those still among us who are certain that the Germans were making soap out of dead soldiers during the first World War, in spite of the fact that British experts since then have said repeatedly that the allegation was nothing

but a fiction, a product of the fertile imagination of some British propagandist.*

Wars breed such stories, as well as brutalities and inhumanities.

Not infrequently, a single, isolated act of barbarism may trigger the ene-

The

Sound

of Many

Voices

9

my’s imagination to concoct tales of horror condemning for years to come entire populations—as was the case with the other wholesale accusation against the Germans during the second World War, that they were making “lamp shades” out of human skin for souvenirs." In wartime even a thoughtless, imprudent act may be seized upon by one’s enemy and exploited to the maximum with similar results. In the height of hositilities during the last war, for instance, Life * published a full-page picture of a girl sitting in front of her desk with a human skull facing her. It was sent to her, the caption said, by her Navy boy-friend who had explained that it was that of a Japanese soldier. The Japanese lost no time in exploiting that particular bit of exuberant sensationalism. Adding their own comments, in which we were depicted as barbarians, head hunters, even cannibals, they distributed that picture widely throughout the Far East, among people who in view of their religion of ancestor worship regard human remains as sacred. Periods of peace may not yield such dramatic and monstrous distortions and misconceptions. The complex modern world, however, with its many organized interests vying for prestige, power, and wealth, literally bristles with half-truths and untruths just as insidious in their slower effects, and perhaps as pernicious. For propaganda is no longer—with the exception of totalitarian systems—the monopoly of a ruler or a ruling elite. As an instrument of social control and manipulation it is accessible to any individual or group with the means to employ it in their interest and against that of their opponent. It is from such centers that emanate the little and big lies, and the misconceptions that may be observed threading their

way through the network of our social relations and daily activities influencing and directing the minds and the behavior of all of us. One’s race must, perforce, be superior to that of others; one’s religion must possess the only real truth; one’s political party must be the sole savior of the nation. What the inevitable effects may be on individuals constantly bombarded by such claims, or how such contradictory pronouncements may disturb the relations between people having to live within the same society is, of course, a vital question—one

too involved to go into at the moment.

Admittedly the picture is not a happy one when one contemplates the extent of such practices, and the long-run results as well as those of the immediate impact. It has been pointed out that the common man is generally baffled when confronted with the effects of propaganda. He is similarly confused and unsure when he attempts to understand the activity that generates these

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Propaganda

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effects. And well he may be. For it is the chief characteristic of propaganda to be elusive; characteristically, propagandists are secretive in their work, avoid the limelight as much as possible and seek the shelter of the shadow. The common man is not the only one who is generally unable to get a clear, sure grasp of this phenomenon. Trained lawyers are presumably “uncommon” men, and those elected to represent the people in legislative assemblies are perhaps more so. And yet a person present in the House of Representatives in Washington on a certain day would have witnessed the incident covered by the following news story: HOUSE DEBATE DEFINES PROPAGANDA AS PLEA FOR OTHER FELLOW’S PLAN WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (AP). It started very simply. Rep. Miller (R. Conn.) asked appointment of a “small committee” to investigate activities of federal employees “turning out so-called propaganda.” It ended in a full-scale House debate involving Minority Whip McCormack (D. Mass.).

Miller said he was not attempting to make it difficult for reporters to get all the information they wanted concerning the government, but “the point that I want to emphasize is the wasting of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even millions, of dollars each year . . . in publishing, under the guise of reports, purely propaganda documents. An example of what he described as propaganda, Miller told the House, was the regional meetings conducted by the Federal Housing Agency “to popularize certain provisions of the Wagner-Ellender-Taft (Housing) bill; to popularize the work of the Federal Housing Administration.” McCormack interrupted to ask: “Does the gentleman charge that those meetings are for the purpose of propaganda?” “Very largely,” Miller replied. “IT am amazed at that statement,” McCormack declared, adding: “In my city, the Housing Authority is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council.

Does the gentleman mean to say that all over the country those local housing authorities, having these meetings occasionally, as they do, are mainly for propaganda purposes?” “TI say, very largely,” Miller affirmed, adding: “Perhaps the gentleman and myself differ on what is propaganda.” °

Apparently, the two Congressmen did differ on what propaganda is. What was simply information to the one was nothing but propaganda to the other. A faint glimmer of an attempt to define propaganda by distinguishing it from other forms of publicity—such as the presentation of “factual information”—is obvious in the quotation above. On the whole, however,

The Sound

of Many

Voices

Il

the debate illustrates rather vividly the elusiveness that characaterizes propaganda in action; an elusiveness which is quite naturally transferred to the term “propaganda” and gives that word a semantic elasticity of no little value to those engaged in conflict of one form or another. But it is precisely the elusiveness of the act, and the elasticity of the term propaganda, valuable assets though they may be in verbal and ideological conflicts, that cause untold damage whenever propaganda is used in order to further some policy, cause, or interest—public or private. In such cases the decision to use propaganda may frequently introduce confusion, even friction, within the ranks of a group; the consequences may have a paralyzing effect on the efforts of the group or, at best, lead to compromises which may compound the confusion and leave matters at a worse state than they were before. Two examples from the area of public policy should suffice to illustrate the harm that may result from this lack of clarity and certainty as to the nature of propaganda. In his book Unwritten Treaty, J. P. Warburg, a former deputy director of the U.S. Office of War Information for Europe, contends that our inadequate understanding of the nature of propaganda was responsible for difficulties we encountered during World War II. “The function of an information agency,” he says, “is to disseminate truth—to make available fact and opinion, each carefully labeled and separated from the other. The aim of an information agency is to enable as many people as possible to form their own individual judgments on the basis of relevant fact and authoritative opinion. “The function of a propaganda agency is almost the exact opposite; it is not to inform, but to persuade. In order to persuade, it must disseminate only such fact, such opinion, and such fiction masquerading as fact as will serve to make people act, or fail to act, in the desired way.

“To think that these two purposes are one and the same, or even similar, is a dangerous error.” ° Apparently someone had been thinking so during the early days of American participation in the war; and how dangerous that thinking had been was amply shown by the large number of propaganda agencies that flourished during the period, all sharing the common characteristics of a short life and an appalling inefficiency. This situation remained uncorrected until the two agencies, the Office of War Information and the Office of Strategic Services, were established and organized around sound and specific purposes of psychological warfare. Failure to understand propaganda in this case had a paralyzing effect

12

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

on our conduct of that particular phase of the war. A different effect is shown in a recent decision made by the National Labor Relations Board on a case involving union-employer relations. In a news report from Washington under the heading “N.L.R.B. ConDONES LiEs, BUT, PLEASE, LITTLE ONES” * one reads that “The National Labor Relations Board said today it was permissible for unions or employers to lie to workers in trying to convince them to vote for or against a union.” Moreover, “Exaggerations, inaccuracies, partial truths, namecalling and falsehoods, while not condoned, may be excused as ‘legitimate propaganda’ before a union representative election.” Finally, the Board concluded that “such ‘propaganda’ should not be ‘so misleading as to prevent the exercise of a free choice by employes in the election of their bargaining representative.’ ” The N.L.R.B. was apparently after some sort of a formula which could define with some clarity the limits beyond which falsification by either labor or management was not “legitimate”. The result was a less than happy compromise. How successful this step was in reducing the conflict between management and labor is, of course, debatable—and not

of interest to us at the moment. What is of present significance is the Board’s recognition of the disturbing character of propaganda, and its effort to bring it under control by circumscribing the limits beyond which it should not be tolerated. The motives of the Board, one might say, were in the right direction. The same, however, cannot be said of the result,

for the distinction between presumably legitimate and illegitimate propaganda is drawn on an extremely shaky conception of propaganda itself. At what point, for instance, does propaganda begin to assume the character of a “misleading” agent, and interfere with the “exercise of a free choice?” The capacity to mislead may be a permanent, undetachable feature of all propaganda effort, large or small. The fundamental assumption underlying the Board’s reasoning seems to be that such a “critical” point does exist, and that it could be deter-

mined solely in terms of the magnitude of the exaggeration or the falsehood—the distortion perpetrated. That leads to all sorts of difficult questions. Who is to decide in every case? What should be the standards? Does a conception of propaganda, based as this is on the single attribute of content (what has been said) reveal the full nature and significance of this truly complex activity? Should intent (the purpose behind the falsehood) be left out of the picture? Does the size of the lie really alter the nature of that purpose?

The Sound

of Many

Voices

13

Intent has been one aspect of propaganda which has received a great deal of attention from those who have been investigating the subject. In one of its early bulletins, the Propaganda Analysis Institute offered this definition: “Propaganda is the expression of opinion or action by individuals or groups deliberately designed to influence opinions or actions of other individuals or groups with reference to predetermined ends.” * Ponderous though this definition may appear, it has the advantage of directing the reader’s attention to one of the essential attributes of propa-__, ganda, the deliberate attempt of the propagandist to drive the minds and behavior of others along paths previously determined by him. It was this perhaps that made this definition acceptable to some experts in the field. In fact, one of them, H. L. Childs, condensed the definition to the simple statement that “To propagandize is merely to propagate ideas and doctrines,” ° and to show that intent was an inseparable feature, he amplified

that statement by adding: “To propagandize is to propagate ideas and doctrines, to attempt deliberately to influence the minds of other people.” ” But what seemed of advantage to some appeared a disadvantage to others.

These felt that the Institute’s, and Childs’ definitions, though

sound enough as far as they went, didn’t go far enough. It has been their claim that a whole area of human behavior influenced by the unplanned or unintentional expression of opinions or actions was pushed beyond the reach of the investigator of propaganda if the latter accepted the lines of demarcation fixed by such definitions. The most outspoken exponent of this point of view has been Leonard Doob, who in his book on the subject considered such unplanned and unintended effects as products of “unintentional” propaganda. By so doing, Doob established a single propaganda frame of reference for all influences, intentional and unintentional, that may affect people and their conduct, and fixed the two categories: “intentional” and “unintentional” propaganda. Pursuing this line of thought, Doob employed the term propaganda “in a neutral sense to describe the influence of one person upon other persons,” “ and formulated a conception of propaganda which he gave in the following two statements: “Propaganda can be called the attempt to affect the personalities and f to control the behavior of individuals toward ends considered unscientific \

or of doubtful value in a society at a particular time.” ”

i

“The dissemination of a viewpoint considered by a group to be ‘bad,’ ‘unjust,’ ‘ugly,’ or ‘unnecessary’ is propaganda in terms of that group’s

|

standards.” *

¥

14

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

Thus Doob, after weakening intent as a criterion of propaganda by introducing an “unintentional” dimension, is compelled to seek a more stable basis for his definition. He finds it in the group’s standards and values. The second statement which is but an elaboration of the first bears this out most forcefully. By so doing, Doob got out of one difficulty only to face another, and a more formidable one. If it is left to each group or society to designate what is propagandistic activity and what is not in terms of its own standards, then the possibility of arriving at a universal conception of propaganda—one that would be valid at all times and in all societies—becomes extremely remote. In fact, it could only be realized if mankind reached the stage of a single society with values and standards established strictly on a scientific basis. For then, any influence of an individual or group upon others which may direct their conduct away from, or against society’s standards would be propagandistic. A somewhat different approach to propaganda will be found in the writings of Harold Lasswell. One of the earliest students of the subject, he refers to it in his book on the use of propaganda during the first World /War as “the control of opinion by significant symbols, or, to speak more concretely and less accurately, by stories, rumors, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication.” “ That this was too general a definition—since all stories and reports about social activities will contain symbols, and all of them will tend to exert some control over opinion—was realized by Lasswell himself. More recently he attempts to fix the character of propaganda by emphasizing the methods propagandists use, and considering it as a special type of instrument of social control. ‘Not bombs nor bread,” he says, “but words, pictures, songs, parades, and many similar devices are the typical means of making propaganda. Not the purpose but the method distinguishes propaganda from the management of men by violence, boycott, bribery, and similar means of social control. Propaganda relies on symbols to attain its end; the manipulation of collective attitudes.” ” Though this is admittedly a more restricted delineation of the field of propaganda, since Lasswell here divorces propaganda from other means of behavior control, such as violence, and coercion in general, it still fails to indicate clearly and fully the methods and techniques modern propagandists have developed to control and channel behavior. The emphasis is still on the direct play upon the emotions with no reference to the indirect attempts at manipulation which modern propagandists practice under the tutelage of the motivation research people. Nor does it indi-

The Sound

of Many

Voices

15

cate explicitly that part of the propagandist’s activity aimed at manipulating slowly, and at times imperceptibly, the intellectual function of the human mind. The kind of manipulation which, by planting the right sort of information in the mind, would guarantee a sure emotional reaction at some future time. Lasswell’s contribution toward a clarification of propaganda’s nature up till that time was his differentiation of propaganda from other instruments of social control, those relying upon coercion. He did not take the next logical step, however: the separation of propaganda from other apparently similar though radically different means of non-coercive or persuasive control; means such as teaching, preaching, advertising. Not until 1950 does he confront that issue. And he settles it by restricting the word propaganda to efforts deliberately conceived to influence mass audiences in favor of special interests. Writing in Psychiatry, he has this to say: “And what do I mean by propaganda? It serves no useful purpose to conceive of propaganda so broadly that it becomes a synonym for every form of communication—from the furtive whisper between neighbors at a lecture to the Voice of America or the circulation of a book purporting to show how the planet Venus influenced human destiny. There is a need for a word which means the making of deliberately one-sided statements to a mass audience. Let us choose ‘propaganda’ as such a word.” * An interesting aspect of that statement is the strong suggestion that deception may be an objective of all propagandistic activity. A more direct and earlier attempt to draw a distinction between propaganda and other non-coercive instruments of social control is made by E. D. Martin. He draws it by contrasting what he considers to be the results of propaganda as against those of education in particular. “Education aims at independence of judgment,’ Martin declares. “Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd. Education and propaganda are directly opposed both in aim and method. “The educator aims at a slow process of development; the propagandist, at quick results. The educator strives to develop individual responsibility; the propagandist, mass efforts. The educator fails unless he achieves an open mind; the propagandist unless he achieves a closed mind.” ” Martin thus does not so much attempt to explain propaganda per se as to indicate that propaganda is an activity the objectives of which are quite different, in fact, the opposite to those of education. Independence of judgment, independent thinking, and individual responsibility, the cultivation of which motivates the educator must be spurned by the propagandist. A line of demarcation can be drawn between the two on the

16

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

basis of their attitudes toward such goals. Differences in method follow inevitably. But what the character of the propagandist’s methods would be in view of his particular objectives, or of propaganda in general as an activity for that matter, Martin does not elaborate. He leaves it up to the reader to formulate his own conception of both by contrasting them to his image of what education is, and does. He thus makes a thorough understanding of education a prerequisite to the understanding of propaganda; and inevitably concludes that the latter is injurious to the democratic process. Following along the same lines, but devoting a great deal of effort to an analysis of the methods used by propagandists, is Frederick Lumley’s book, The Propaganda Menace.

Here the menace is specifically to the

democratic society, but eventually to human society in general. He postulates the general concept of cultural promotion—the transmission of culture by one generation to the next—and then considers briefly the various techniques society may employ to promote its culture, such as coercion, indoctrination, education. He is particularly interested in determining whether propaganda is a special type of promotional technique, possesing a character of its own; and if so, what its distinguishing marks would be that would differentiate it from the other promotional efforts. He reaches the conclusion that it is, and that its chief distinguishing characteristic is concealment. / Lumley works out this definition: “Propaganda is promotion which is veiled in one way or another as to (1) its origin or sources, (2) the interests involved, (3) the methods employed, (4) the content spread, and (5) the results accruing to the victims—any one, any two, any three, any four, or all five.” *

Concealment is, of course, closely akin to deception. But is all concealment to be viewed as a form of propaganda? The magician conceals the methods he employs; is he a propagandist? And it is to be noted that a “promoter” does not have to conceal all of the five features enumerated above to be a propagandist. He may or may not conceal his identity, the interests he is serving, the methods he is employing, the content he is spreading, or the effects of his activity upon his “victims.” What he would conceal if he is a propagandist, must be determined by some ulterior consideration, a desired objective. That objective is deception. He conceals in order to deceive.

Had Lumley pushed his analysis beyond the operational stage, he might have arrived at this closer and more accurate picture of the essential nature of propaganda. He might have perceived and given us an image of propa-

The

Sound

of Many

Voices

17

ganda such as that described by Dr. Maxwell Garrett, once the Organizing Secretary of the League of Nations Union: “We may define propaganda as any organized effort to make people think of something—whether concrete or abstract, simple or complex—otherwise than it would be thought of by a perfectly impartial person aware of all the relevant facts.” T. H. Qualter’s definition emphasizes ultimate ends: “Propaganda is . .. the deliberate attempt by some individual or group to form, control, or alter the attitudes of other groups by the use of the instruments of communication, with the intention that in any given situation the reaction of those so influenced will be that desired by the propagandist.” ” The propagandist resorts to concealment in an effort to prevent people from having free access to all the pertinent facts relevant to a specific situation. His essential purpose is to deceive. Now deception may be induced by other means than merely concealing, or in any manner distorting, some of the facts in a situation—by the mere spreading of content. It is possible to deceive people about the nature of the existing social reality, not by a direct play upon their image of that reality, but by so manipulating the reality itself as to appear to them other than it actually is. This particular aspect of propaganda is emphasized by E. L. Bernays, whose writings, as well as his practice in the field of public relations, reveal

his conception of propaganda as “a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.” * Is such an effort essential in our society? Bernays thinks it is. In his view, it is necessitated by the complexity of our social system, and used strategically as an “executive arm” by the “intelligent” few who constitute the “invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” ~ It is but natural—and to the credit of his consistency—that this practical (“realistic”) view of our social order would be reflected in

his answer to the question that many follow: Is it morally justifiable? Bernays dismisses emphatically the desirability, even the possibility, of evaluating propaganda in terms of any overall standard—such as the democratic ideal, for instance, which underlie both Martin’s and Lumley’s condemnation of it. Instead, he views it as an essential tool to be used

by special interests in the furtherance of their causes, and restricts the basis for its evaluation to the specific instances where it may be applied. These are his words: “I am aware that the word ‘propaganda’ carries to many minds an unpleasant connotation. Yet whether, in any instance, propaganda is good or bad depends upon the merit of the cause urged, and the correctness of the information published.” *

el i

18

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

By avoiding the larger moral issue, Bernays finds himself in the camp of those who believe that the end justifies the means. He does not supply, furthermore, any answer as to who should decide whether a certain cause is good or bad, or the information published correct. By implication it should be those “intelligent” few. A number of other attempts to define propaganda may be cited, but not much would be added to what has already been said. The disagreement between the writers is general; and we have had a few samples of the harm that may result from it. This book is written in the hope that further treatment of the subject may lead to some much needed clarification—to some clearer appreciation of the relationships between such aspects of propaganda as content, methods, objectives, and effects; and of the whole activity to our social world. Much of that hope springs from the conviction that what really has been causing most of the trouble in this failure to arrive at a workable consensus is fundamentally a problem in semantics. The same word, propaganda, has been equated by various authors with different, specific aspects of the total activity that is propaganda; and in some cases, with influences on human conduct which may be better understood if classified under a different category.

This, it seems, has been the

real obstacle to a general agreement. Lasswell implies that much when he suggests that we should “choose” the word propaganda to designate the act of spreading to a mass audience statements that are deliberately one-sided. Max Lerner is more explicit when, in a review of a book on propaganda, he states the following: “To view the whole realm of opinion as one of ‘competing propagandas,’ and every effort at persuasion as an effort at propaganda is to see the world through the word instead of through the thought and deed, in monstrously inflated terms. The consequence is a collective indecision which makes us powerless against the single-minded intelligence and the ruthless will of Hitlerism.” * Both these men were apparently trying to shake the word loose from the deed. In Lasswell’s case, it snapped back again, but only by choice.

CHAPTER

3

BY ANY OTHER NAME...

“We live in an age of intense propaganda, of intolerant and strident promulgations of ideologies. To turn a deaf ear is to court disaster, for no man can live completely outside his time and place. Better to sharpen the wits in order better to appreciate truth that lies concealed in many a verbal distortion.”—C. C. Pratt, Psychology, The Third Dimension of War.

That propaganda the word and propaganda the deed are two distinct entities is clearly indicated by the fact that each has had a history of its own till modern times. Take the word. Etymologically, the word propaganda is derived from the Latin verb propagare.

The verb, explains Lumley, “had reference to

the very specific act of fastening down slips or roots of plants in such a way as to cause them to multiply and spread; in short, it had reference to the gardener’s work of forcing growth among plants or vegetables.”* A rather inauspicious beginning, one might say. Late in the life of the Roman Empire, the word acquired an abstract meaning, signifying whenever used, the dissemination of information, from gossip to religious doctrine. With this background it is understandable that when centuries later (17th)

the successor

to Roman

power,

the

Catholic Church, finding itself confronted with the problem of maintaining its hold in Europe and elsewhere, used the term to designate a commission of Cardinals whose chief function was to spread its doctrines to heretical and heathen countries. This commission was ultimately (1622) made permanent and came to be known as the Sacred Congregation de propaganda fide. It is easy to see why in the Catholic tradition, and in predominantly Catholic countries today the term does not possess the sinister meaning that it has acquired in the Protestant world. By its act, incidentally, the Catholic Church unwittingly added a new connotation to the word, for soon the term propaganda came to be applied to any organization established with the purpose of spreading a doctrine and a philosophy; or any social movement. This point of view is still reflected in many dictionary definitions, and in many people’s minds. It was during the first World War that the word was further extended to cover all efforts and methods to mislead, to tear down as well as build

19

Propaganda

20

Comes

of Age

up group morale, to influence and in every manner to direct and control the thoughts and acts of people. The effort to mislead (propaganda, the deed) has, of course, been prac-

ticed for a much longer period of time than since the Romans; and has also undergone a considerable development. But what does it really involve? The question raised previously: “What precisely is propaganda?” may be restated as: What exactly is the nature of the activity that is promotional, but not coercive; persuasive, but neither educational nor informational?

And, How can it be isolated, and distinguished from these other

activities? Adequate answers to these questions may help dispel the mystery that now hovers over “propaganda”; and may diminish the skepticism and cynicism that the public may now have with respect to all promotional efforts since it would be made clear that many of them are not necessarily of a propagandistic nature. Such answers may further make it possible to subject the activity itself to a more scientific treatment than it has hitherto received: to study it in all its aspects and its implications without risking the danger of roaming all over the areas of human behavior. But where would one find these answers? Having detached the label “propaganda” from the activity, we thereby rejected the answers given by the writers quoted in the previous chapter. In the process, we have freed our hand to survey the activity in all its nakedness, so to speak.

To see it as it actually is, and not as it may be

deflected if seen through a prism. On the assumption that the character of any activity is bound to be reflected in its products, and that a close scrutiny of the latter would invariably lead one to its true nature, it may pay us to take a look at some of the material produced by this activity. Our interest in viewing such material is not in the causes or interests

they were intended to serve, nor their goodness or badness in terms of the effects they may have had. Instead, it lies in the fact that as products of the same activity they should possess the common elements upon which a sound definition of that activity may be constructed. With that in mind, consider these examples: A report in our press during World War II ran as follows: “FREE

LOVE”

Rome, Oct. 9 (UP).

OFFERED

NAZIS

ON FURLOUGH

German soldiers on leave from the Italian front have only

to pin an entwined heart button on their lapel during their furloughs home to find a

girl friend, a captured circular from the Eighth Army front revealed today.

By Any

Other

Name...

21

The circular disclosed existence of the “League of Lonely War Women,” and said its members were willing to “give themselves over to the fulfillment of the soldiers’ dreams.” Its purpose is to make more pleasant the furlough and to bolster Germany’s birth rate. A button was affixed to the circular. “Dear front soldier,” the circular reads. “When will you come back on leave? We are waiting for you whom the war has robbed of his home, for you who stands

alone in a world of wife and fiancee. “Take this badge and display it visibly. Soon a member of our League of Lonely War Women will take charge of you and your front-line dreams and longings will find fulfillment. It is you we want, not your money. “There are members everywhere, since we German women understand our duties toward the defenders of our country. Naturally we aren’t unselfish. Naturally we long to have a real German boy to press him to our bosom. “Don’t be shy. Your wife, sister and sweetheart is one of us. We think of you, but we also think of the future of Germany.” *

Items such as the following, reflecting the Cold War, have also appeared in our newspapers: SUGAR-COATED

SOVIET

LINE

by The

AT

1¢ SOURS

POLICE

FAST

United Press

WHEELING, W. VA., Jan. 12. The police today were investigating fifty “subversive” vending machines they seized after discovering that the machines had doled out Communist trinkets along with candy. All penny candy machines in the city were ordered seized by City Manager Robert L. Plummer after it was found that some dispensed trinkets bearing the hammer and sickle. Also mixed with the candy were cards bearing data about the Soviet Union. The machines were licensed to store owners and distributed by the Confections Specialties Company of Pittsburgh. Irving Marrick, who operates the company with Herbert Cohen, told the officers that he had purchased the candy from a New York

firm and had not known that the packages contained propaganda.®

The Communists, too, seem to have trouble with this infiltration of propaganda ideas in non-political areas. From the other side of the Atlantic, for instance, comes this item: “PROPAGANDA” Reds See Plot as Tito is

IN PUZZLE

Termed “Statesman” in Cross-word Game

A German Communist newspaper recently published a lengthy apology for having used the name of Marshal Tito in a crossword puzzle, the London Daily Mail

reports. In a full column of self-criticism, the newspaper said its editor had overlooked the fact that “Tito” was the crossword puzzle’s answer for “a European Statesman.” The newspaper explained that the puzzles were supplied by a non-Communist feature syndicate, and added:

Propaganda

22

Comes

of Age

“You can see how cleverly the imperialist propagandists squeeze anti-Communist propaganda even into such non-political things as crossword puzzles.” ‘

That the Communists have known well for some time the value of the crossword puzzle as a propaganda device is exemplified by an interesting item in the Young Worker. Among the questions and answers supplied to tender minds were these: Q. Q.

Our oppressors. Do we support the Boy Scouts?

A. A.

Capitalists. No.

Q.

What workers must do in order to get an

A.

Strike.

Q.

increase in wages. What the workers in all countries must do.

A.

Unite.”

Looking into the field of economic competition, one may discover the propagandist staging events in order to attract the public’s attention. “AXIS SALLY” WAS CENTRAL FIGURE IN 1928 “LOST LOVER” HOAX Camden, N.J., Sept. 1 (UP). A page from “Axis Sally’s” past came back to haunt her today. A Justice Department spokesman in Washington confirmed that the woman

who will be tried on a treason charge was the same Mildred E. Gillars who was the central figure in a gigantic hoax here 20 years ago. The sexy-voiced Nazi propagandist of World War II was 18 when she walked into a Camden newspaper office October 18, 1928. She said she was “Barbara Elliott” and wanted to insert a want-ad pleading with “my husband and lover, Charles Elliott, to come back to me.” She said she couldn’t live without him.

Reporters jumped for what seemed a wonderful human interest story. They were told that the pretty girl and her Charles had fallen in love “the moment our eyes met.” They were married, she said, and after a month of blissful married life

Charles walked out. “A week later I discovered I was to bear his child,” she said, weeping. “Charles would not have wanted the baby. I know what it is to be an unwanted child. Mine will not be born that way.” While the newspapers played up the “tragedy,” Barbara wrote a suicide note. In it, she carefully mentioned the time she would jump off the bridge. It was to be 2 p.m.—the hour at which she first met Charles. Police were at the bridge at 2 p.m., of course and took her to jail for safekeeping. Then Charles appeared at the jail. His supposedly grief-stricken young “bride” was burned up. “What the hell kept you so long?” she asked him. Charles turned out to be an unemployed writer, named Ramsey. The true story came out. Barbara Elliot was really Mildred Gillars of Portland,

By Any

Other

Name...

23

Me., a bit player on Broadway. She and Ramsey were offered $75 to stage their stunt to promote a movie called “Unwanted Children.” Since neither of them had gotten their pay, the judge suspended three-months’ jail sentences and ordered them out of town.*

Or, if economic conflicts become so intensified that they break through the purely economic area and spill over into the political involving the government and some of its policies, one may find the propagandist at work attempting to mobilize public opinion against such governmental policies. Typical of such an effort is the following taken from an artistically illustrated ABC booklet entitled “Your Highway,” and distributed widely by an oil company: G_

stands

for Gasoline,

fuel

of the nation

Taxed more than anything else in creation. Taxes of sixteen or seventeen kinds! Please, Mister Tax-men—we’re losing our minds! N_

for Necessity,

Mother

of Motors,

Born of our need for this cheap transportation Muster the strength of American voters! Down with high taxes, unjust regulation!

Y

stands for You—not for three other guys! You’re needed to Ficht—not to merely stand by! Unless all the users of highways “get wise,” Your cheap transportation will dwindle and die!

Z_

stands for Zero—that’s what YOU will get, Unless you protect motor cars from restriction. This progress in Transport—the Country’s best bet— Will serve you for years—IF YOu’LL VOTE YOUR CONVICTION.

Out of religious tensions come forth a great variety of “unchristian, unbrotherly” blasts of which the following may serve as a typical example. It was contained in a tract published in the mid-west under the title “When Knight Meets Knight.” Two members of the K. of C. were said to have met and carried on the following conversation:

Whence came you? From the Holy City of Rome. What came you here to do? To make America Catholic. POPO

Propaganda

bo~

Comes

of Age

Then you are a K. of C. I presume? I am so taken and accepted by all fourth degree Knights of Columbus. How do you know yourself to be a K. of C.? By my feeling of hatred towards all Protestants, especially Masons. . . Where were you first prepared to be a K. of C.? In a Parochial School.

Where

.

next?

In Father Murphy’s home. How were you prepared? By being taught that the Pope was Christ on Earth and that his will must be

>DOPOPOPOPO

. obeyed.

What followed? I was conducted down some steps to a cellar. How did you know it to be a cellar? By the odor of whiskey in the air. What were you asked? In whom I placed my trust. Your answer? The Pope.

What was then said to you?

My trust being PO POPDrOPO

in the Pope, I would most assuredly enter Purgatory after

a o i) oo=

What was then done to you? I was led around the floor of the cellar. Why were you led? Because I was blindfolded and could not see for myself. What did that teach you? That all Catholics are blind and must be led by their Priests.

>OPO>E

An immense volume of literature—tracts, pamphlets, posters, postcards—is flooding our schools and not a few of our homes today urging people to try and put a stop to the use of serums, vaccines, alcohol, etc. In one of such pamphlets issued by the New York Anti-Vivisection Society one is informed of the “real” reason behind the Medical Association’s support of vaccination. Entitled “SHALL WE SuBMiT To IT?” it reads, in part, as follows: The pernicious influence of the American Medical Association has produced a tyrannical profession, clamoring for State and Federal laws whereby it may dictate the use of serums and vaccines, and enforce their employment at will. The tyranny of the Salem witchcraft days would pale before the demands of this organization. Does anyone suppose for a moment that this deep-paid, far-reaching program is for the benefit of suffering humanity? Do we not realize that

commercialism, TISDtS eevee

money

and power, instigate this intolerable invasion of personal

By Any

Other

Name...

25

Yet high medical authorities today claim that serum or vaccine inoculations are degenerating the human race. And what can be expected of a profession calloused and demoralized by its ferocious atrocities inflicted upon the helpless sub-human creatures? If these are right then Might is Right, Cruelty is Right, Evil is Right!"

And in a tract entitled “THE SMOKING FEMALE”, issued by the National Temperance Society, one is not in fact told much about the relation of smoking and women’s health but is certainly given a peculiar version of the causes of criminality. Practically all young criminals [says this tract] are cigarette fiends. This is no mere happen-so. The cigarette itself is both a maker of criminals and a soother

of consciences of the criminals it makes, just as it is a maker of nervousness and a soother of the nervous condition it creates. I verily believe that should the cigarette be banished from the earth, crime in our large cities would be reduced fifty per cent within a comparatively short time. During one month the increase in the consumption of cigarettes was two billion more than it was during the corresponding month of the previous year, and this, we are informed, was due to the prevalent use of cigarettes by women who evidently have found that they soothe their nerves.°

A great deal of propagandistic material issues forth daily from race prejudice and friction, much of it dealing with matters only remotely, if at all, related to biology or to race as scientists understand it. Here is a sample: A four-page circular issued by a group, which no doubt considers

itself highly patriotic, appeals to the citizenry of a midwestern city to join them for some drastic political action. The appeal is most direct and personal. On the first page are these questions: How

Do You LIKE:

1. Negroes in White Swimming Pools? 2. Negroes Buying Homes Next Door to You? 3. Negroes Playing with your White Children in Schools? 4. Negroes Attempting to Force Themselves into White Restaurants, Theatres, Parks? . Communism and Mongrelization being Taught Your Children in School? . Your Political Masters, Who were Once Your Public Servants? . Political, Kangaroo

Courts, Instead of Courts of Justice?

. The Corrupt Way Your City Hall is Run? . The Control of Your City by Small Minority Groups? . The Rapid Decay of Your City due to the Above Reasons? —AY ON Cw

Comes

of Age

But, if You

don’t like

Propaganda

26

Then comes the challenge: Ir You like these things, then You should be happy. them, there’s something You can do about it.’

Politics, always a rich vein of propagandistic material, and becoming more so with each election, could supply us with a great abundance of examples. A few outstanding ones from recent national campaigns may be mentioned.

Such were,

for instance,

the circulation

of a rubber

dollar bill by the Republicans in 1948; some pamphlets linking Wendell Wilkie with Hitler and the Nazis, distributed by one of those mushroom organizations with a Post Office Box address and no doubt enjoying the good wishes, if not the financial support, of the Democrats; a post-card bearing the picture of a well-known painting of a country yokel in his Sunday suit whose idiotic smile and general facial expression were apparently too tempting for the Republican propagandists to pass by was given a wide circulation after the legend, “Sure, ’m for Roosevelt,” had

been stamped on it. Close to our purpose, however, has been literature from both our political parties dealing with the same subject, the Social Security Act. Such a head-on clash between rival propagandists is always very helpful in revealing the true nature of their work as they are forced to handle the same subject from the different angle of their particular interest. Here, for example, is the way the Republican National Committee (Industrial Division) presented the law to the workers. A small yellow and white tract with the word “Compulsory” printed on it in large, black, vivid letters states as follows: You’ve been presented with a “Cat in a Bag” We think it has some long claws, but that is for you to judge. It’s called the “Social Security” law. Here are the facts about this strange animal that the Roosevelt New Dealers passed on to you: This Company on January 1, 1937 will be assessed a 2% tax on every dollar that goes into your pay envelopes. Beginning January 1, 1937 the Administration now in Washington also requires us to deduct 1% from your weekly pay envelope and turn it over to them. It doesn’t stop there, however, as time goes on the deductions from your pay envelope may go to 3% weekly, according to this hurried, underbaked legislation. We, the company, can be compelled to deduct as much as 6% from our weekly payroll. Your State and Federal deductions plus our deductions will total 9% on wages. That’s a lot of money to take out of wages. It ought to make any worker squirm

By Any Other

Name...

27

to see these figures in cold type . . . and squirm still more when he counts over his diminished bank roll. You actually haven’t started to squirm, however, until you realize that you have no guarantee of ever getting this money back. No policy, no contract, nothing binding whatever from the Government. This payroll money can be used for any purpose the Administration sees fit and can only be used for pensions or unemployment insurance if Congress decides to vote appropriations for that purpose each year. We thought you ought to know these facts. They worry us because some of our payroll tax will have to be absorbed in a higher price for our product. That curtails the consumption. And the minute we sell less, we’re compelled to manufacture less. Anyway you look at it, the worker gets the worst of it. We want to hire more employees—not less. We want to see your pay envelopes fatten—not dwindle. We want to vote to repeal this so-called “Security Act” for your sakes as well as ours. What do you say? Think it over and—

ELECTION

DAY

SAY

IT

This argument is developed more extensively and with added variations in a somewhat larger leaflet entitled: THE UN-SOCIAL

IN-SECURITY

ACT

OF THE NEW

DEAL

Obviously appealing to the worker directly, this publication contains some rather potent insinuations. For instance. DO

YOU

THINK

WAGES

Do

No

AND

PAYROLLS

SHOULD

BE TAXED?

You

Know That Next Year, 1937, All Workers In Commerce and Industry Matter How Little They Earn, Will be Paying A Federal Income Tax

Further down: Now How Will These Taxes Affect Employment? If your employer has to pay $62.40 because he is employing you at $20 a week, is it not likely he will be tempted to get along without you? What Law Levies These Taxes The New Deal’s So-Called “Social Security Act”

What Security Does This Act Give? It is supposed to provide for old age pensions AFTER you are 65 and unemployment insurance for a short time AFTER you have been out of work for a

number of weeks. Will It Pay Such Pensions? It May or It May Not—Nobody Can Be Sure!

Propaganda

28

Comes

of Age

The pamphlet concludes with a formidable appeal: Under The New Deal The Government Has Broken Promises THINK THINK THINK

Don’t Be Tricked By High Sounding Names Like “Social Security” Another

This Is Only Brain Trust Dodge More

To Get

Taxes

Out of the people—more money into the U.S. Treasury for “experimentation”— another wheel in the Political Machine

The New Steal is Building! AMERICANS!

Don’t Be Broken

On The Wheel

VOTE

REPUBLICAN

of Taxes!

A still larger leaflet attractively decorated with red borders and bearing the picture of “A NEw DEAL JupGe” dressed in academic attire plays on the same theme, but with a still further variation.

On its face and

around the picture of the “judge,” in bold, large red and black lettering is the following message: You're Sentenced

TO A WEEKLY PAY REDUCTION for

ALL OF YOUR WORKING LIFE YOU’LL HAVE TO SERVE THE SENTENCE UNLESS YOU HELP TO REVERSE IT NOV. 3 ELECTION DAY

That particular Republican campaign against the Social Security Act came to a climax when a week or two before Election Day thousands of workers in some industries received their pay in envelopes supplied by the Republican party bearing this legend: PAY DEDUCTION Effective January 1937, we are compelled by a Roosevelt “New Deal” law, to make a 1% deduction from your wages and turn it over to the government. Finally this may go as high as 4%. You might get this money back in future years .. . but only if Congress decides to make the appropriation for that purpose. There is

By Any Other

Name...

29

NO guarantee. Decide, before November wish to take these chances.

3—election

day, whether

or not you

The title words “Pay DEDUCTION” were in red. The Democratic National Committee, however, told a different story,

as the following illustrates: NOTICE

OF PAY

INCREASE

To All Employees Do You Know that beginning January 1st your employer will be compelled by the Social Security Law to send an amount equal to one percent of your pay to Washington to be held in trust for you by Uncle Sam? Do You Know that this added amount from your employer will give you an old age benefit after you are 65 years old as long as you live?

Do You Know that for every nickel you conrtibute to your own old age benefits, under the Social Security Act, your Employer IS REQUIRED TO CONTRIBUTE A LIKE AMOUNT? This amounts to a PAY INCREASE FOR YOU. Do You

Know that under the Federal Security Law, the employer is likewise required to pay THE FULL AMOUNT OF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE?

Do You Know that certain employers are trying to scare you with false statements about Social Security because they have to pay half of your insurance? Do You Know that under the Social Security Act, you will get at least three times as much as you contribute, that the average is FIVE TIMES, and that MANY WORKERS WILL GET EVEN MORE? Do You Know that this money will be HELD IN TRUST FOR YOU whether you cease your present employment or not and that if you die every cent you put in will be returned with compound interest to your family? ...

Don’t vote against your own

interest. Vote for

ROOSEVELT And a Pay Increase on January 1

The contrast in presentation is quite obvious; and the truth does indeed lie concealed in the respective verbal pronouncements. It is interesting that today with so many years of experience behind us there are still among the Republicans those who try to convince the American public that Social Security is a highly undesirable program (and try to weaken it by suggesting it should be made voluntary); and there are those in the Democratic corner who offer it as a great boon to

Propaganda

30

Comes

of Age

the common man (and try to strengthen it by proposing that Medicare be attached to it).

We could go on with such examples indefinitely, but a sufficient number have been cited to reveal the true nature of propaganda, the “deed”. Suppose we take a closer look at these examples. It is obvious that they all reflect a common social condition out of which they arise, namely, conflict.

World

War

II is behind that leaflet to the German

soldier;

the Cold War, behind the crossword puzzles; economic competition, behind the “Axis Sally” story; political strife, behind the releases on the Social Security Act. Does that mean that wherever there is conflict this activity will also be present?

Not necessarily.

Conflict, competition, strife within a society,

or between societies, may generate the activity; then again, they may not. The generalization, however, that where the activity is present some sort of conflict always lurks in the background is true. The principle may even be established that the intensity of the activity within a certain social area is directly proportional to the intensity of strife present in the area. But conflict itself would not generate it invariably. Were it otherwise, it would be impossible to draw that all-important distinction that must be drawn between activity that is propagandistic and activities that are not, such as publicity in general, or advertising. The latter too reflect some kind of conflict or competition, but so long as they remain in their pure form, so long as they retain their informative character, they are quite distinct from the activity we are primarily concerned with at the

moment. For propagandistic activity is not informative; it is manipulative. And as such it tends to acquire features that the others do not possess; features that are clearly reflected in the examples given. There is a persistent effort reflected in all of the examples to push some idea. All of them were intended to promote either the acceptance of, or disbelief in some doctrine, fact, opinion, or philosophy of life.

The

German solider’s womenfolk were “deceiving” him; life in the Soviet must be “paradise” according to those trinkets; Tito was a traitor to the cause, not a “statesman;” and who could afford to miss that “stirring”

human drama of “Unwanted Children?”

And the Social Security Act?

Of course it was a “reduction” in pay; what else?

An “Increase,” na-

turally! Out of conflicting views, interests, and ideologies arise the desire and

the effort to promote one’s point of view, to manipulate the mind of

By Any

Other

Name...

31

others, to gain supporters in the struggle. Promotion then is one of the ingredients of all propagandistic activity. But here again we must be careful, for not all promotion is of a propagandistic nature. Man has devised a great variety of means to influence the minds and behavior of people. Bribery, blackmail, the use of, or the threat of the use of physical force—coercion of all kinds —these have been in use for a long time to direct human conduct toward desired channels. But the particular quality that characterizes all of these as attempts at behavior manipulation is not to be found in propagandistic activity. The source of pressure for the kind of conduct desired is overtly external, in every case, to the individual upon whom it is exerted; also, so is the control and direction of such conduct.

Hence,

promotion of this type is coercive, and compulsive. As a matter of fact the promoter resorting to such methods is indifferent as to whether an individual really believes in the propriety and righteousness of the act he is induced to perform. His only concern is that the act be performed. Not so with the propagandist. A glance at the material presented will show that in none of them is such a condition to be found.

Instead,

what we do find is: “Are you happy with the conditions as they are?” And, “Are you going to vote your convictions?” And, “Shall we submit to it?” Or, “Think Think Think”. In other words, the propagandistic promoter is chiefly concerned with making the individual see an act as the only proper way of conduct for him. In actuality he never surrenders the control he exercizes over the individual’s behavior; and the source

of pressure remains external to the individual.

That fact, however, is

hidden from the individual who must be made to believe that he, and

he alone, decides on a course of action. Among the other illusions that the propagandist attempts to create, he must create and maintain the illusion that his victim is self-propelled. To accomplish this, he must resort to means that are not coercive, but persuasive in nature. So, while in appearance, the propagandist seems to be transferring the directive force of behavior from an area external to the individual to one that is internal, namely, the individual’s consciousness, in reality he is busily engaged in manipulating that consciousness, and in attempting to operate from within the individual. Persuasion is another element to be found in this kind of manipulative effort—a kind of effort which at this stage may be defined as the attempt to induce behavior along predetermined lines by means other

than the use of force. The statement was just made

that the propagandistic promoter

is

32

Propaganda

Comes

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chiefly concerned with the manner in which an individual may view a certain act. Some clarification may be in order. The term “chiefly” was used to indicate the fact that this promoter devotes most of his time and energies in that dircetion. This does not mean, however, that he is only casually interested in the act itself. Inducing, eventually, that act remains his primary and ultimate objective. That he has in common with the coercive promoter. Where he differs from him is in his assumption or discovery that his persuasive approach pays more dividends in the long run. For, if successful, he can dispense with, or considerably limit, the use of the costly means of coercive control. Though on the surface and through his actions, he may appear to be more deeply interested in how an individual may feel about a certain response, obtaining that response is his real and fundamental objective. All his efforts will be in vain if that act did not materialize. “Propaganda”, says J. A. C. Brown, “which does not lead to action has very largely failed.” * The expectation for some eventual action of the kind already planned and at a time carefully predetermined is another of the permanent components of his activity. All our examples reffect this call for action in one way or another. Some urge it explicitly as in the case of “come and join us,” or, “vote on Nov. 3.” Others contain it in an implicit form.

The German soldier at the front, for instance, is not told what to

do, but he is expected to act the way all demoralized soldiers act. By renouncing the use of force and relying exclusively on persuasive means, the propagandist faces a severe task, made especially difficult by the fact that his insistence that the individual do some thinking on the matter at hand is only a pretense. Consider persuasive promotion for a moment. It is pursued on the assumption that there is in man an innate propensity to act rationally; an inclination to respond to situations in accordance with the facts that confront him. The journalist, the radio commentator, and others who use the media of communication with the purpose of informing the public take that for granted. So does the educator. Such men not only take the existence of such an inborn quality as a fact, they respect it, as is evidenced by all their efforts being strongly motivated by the desire to further it and to cultivate it.

The propagandist too must take it as a fact; but because of special considerations of his own, he must try and overcome it. Suppose we look back at our examples again. What do we see? Obviously, the men who produced such material share with the others

By Any Other

Name...

33

this belief in the capacity of man to indulge in some short of intellectual activity. It is reflected in all the appeals to think and to figure things out. But now let us look a little closer. Do the promoters behind those releases show the respect for human intelligence the others may have? Are they trying to develop it? Or are they trying to exploit it; to suppress it, if possible; or to by-pass it, if necessary? Observe the appeals to racial and religious prejudice, for instance. When they make direct appeals to reason, are they really showing respect for that quality; or, are they merely pretending? Take the story about the “League of Lonely War Women,” for example. Is it at all likely that such an organization could exist and operate in a totalitarian state with its Gestapo and other such agencies; in wartime, mind you? Someone must have produced the leaflet and those buttons. One can be certain, however, that it wasn’t any League of Lonely Women. Note for instance, that they were distributed at the front lines. And more significant still, note this: “Your wife, sister and sweetheart is one of us!” Revealing, isn’t it? Obviously they were “enemy” (Allied) leaflets.” Or, take some other examples. Do taxes really “restrict” motor cars; and are they a form of “unjust” regulation? Did that dialogue between the two knights really take place—outside the author’s imagination? Or, take this one: Is the doctor’s interest in vaccines to be justly attributed to commercialism? And who, by the way, are the “high medical authorities” who assure us that “serum or vaccine inoculations are degenerating the human race? What we have here is an inordinate amount of distortion; of misinformation and misrepresentation; of error, or a departure from the true facts of the situation depicted. Events, personalities, groups are all pictured with little, if any, consideration to those facts. Some degree of error, or inaccuracy, is always present, of course, in all

persuasive content. Such error is a reflection of the inadequacies of our finite minds; of the impossibility for man to grasp the total, absolute truth of any situation.

unintentional.

Such error is inevitable, and in a sense natural and

Respectable journalism tries to combat it. In education

we try to reduce it, and we are constantly on the alert to correct past er-

ror as our scientists push accuracy of perception to a higher and higher degree. This is not the kind of error that screams so loudly in the examples that we have surveyed. The misinformation and misrepresentations just

34.

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

noted are neither natural, nor unintentional. They were deliberately concocted; they had a purpose behind them. That purpose was dictated by the necessity imposed upon the propagandist to create that double illusion in the minds of his victims: first, that the world reality is the way he describes it; and second, that the manner of responding to that reality is left up to the individual himself to decide. Deliberate distortion thus becomes an indispensable component of his activity; also the boundary at which the line may be drawn which would separate his activity from those of other persuasive promoters. A vital question may be raised at this point: How is one to know whether the error he has detected in some release is of the first (natural) variety, or the second (deliberate)? One cannot very well consult with the dispenser of the error. For, in the case where the error may be

natural, the dispenser may not even recognize it as error; while in the second case, the perpetrator would not, of course, tell; and if he has

hidden his identity, he could not even be reached. Again, the only way of determining with some certainty the kind of error we may be dealing with in a particular situation is to go to the material itself and analyze the error it may contain. It should not be difficult to discover error of the first order, especially if one is at all familiar with the particular field involved. Error of this type, we have seen is wholly unintentional. It therefore is uncontrollable, and the dispenser of it should be entirely unaware of the fact that he is spreading it. For him it has no value whatever as a directive influence over the minds and conduct of people who may receive it. In fact, being uncontrolled, it may not even be leading the recipient’s mind toward any single conclusion. Error of the second order, on the other hand, is a different matter

altogether. Being deliberately tailored to suit the propagandist’s purpose, it is controllable. Since it has been manufactured to serve as a directive force in behavior, if accepted as “truth,” it acquires the same

quality, namely an inexorable drive toward a monistic interpretation of the “facts,” and is intolerant of any response to them other than the one dictated by that interpretation. An analysis, therefore, of a succession of releases from the same source should reveal what distortions had been deliberately manufactured to drive an individual to the one conclusion that had been conceived by the promoter in advance. Consider the material on the Social Security Act again. Take the “PAY DEDUCTION” envelope in which the worker was given his pay. There is not a single reference on it to the fact that the employer

By Any Other

Name...

35

would have to make a contribution also. Such a reference is made in the other releases, but it is the envelope that the worker carries home with him for sure. In general, the Act as a whole is presented as a legal artifice calculated to bring about a deduction in the worker’s pay. Notice ‘“Unsocial,” “Insecurity” Act. And the picture of the terminology: the “Judge;” what is its implication but that the worker is placed on a par with a criminal by the opposing political party? And that opposing political party, the Democratic, how did it interpret the same Act? Its purpose was to “increase” the worker’s pay; the employer was to be “compelled” to contribute; the money was to be held in “trust” for the worker by “Uncle Sam’”—a more potent. symbol, incidentally, than merely the “government.” In brief, every morsel of misinformation and misinterpretation was premeditated, and calculated to drive the worker in one direction: a hostile attitude toward the proposed legislation in the case of the Republican releases; a favorable one, in that of the Democratic.

To one writer on the subject, this constant preoccupation of the propagandist with deliberate distortion in an effort to direct the mind along a single predetermined path seems to constitute the real essence of his activity. Says R. S. Lambert in his book on Propaganda: “For it is of the essence of propaganda that it should influence persons to do or think things which they would not do or think if left to themselves. The propagandist does not, like the scientist, or even like the publicist, content himself with searching for, or enunciating, facts, and leaving them to

speak for themselves, not caring very much whether they are accepted or not. On the contrary, his work stands or falls by the question of acceptation. It is not whether the matter to be propagated is the truth that is of fundamental importance; but whether those whom it is desired to influence are brought to believe in it and act upon it.” * There remains one question: Why should anyone go to all the trouble —and it is quite a formidable exercise if one undertakes it seriously— to deceive and mislead others? Or, to put it differently: What are the “special considerations” mentioned previously that motivate the propagandist in his nefarious work? The answer to such a question would lead one to the next, and last element characteristic of his activity. A glance at the examples once more would yield that answer. Running through all of them and underlying them is to be found an organized interest of some sort; a national interest in the case of some, a political or economic one in the case of others. It is these interests, some old and established, others new and challenging, that find themselves in conflict ee meee

Propaganda

36

Comes

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with one another, competing for power and prestige as well as wealth. Being special interests, but relying, nevertheless, on the support of the general public, they find themselves in the predicament of having to disguise and cloak their special causes in terms of general—and in the case of national interests, in universal—appeals. It is this condition that imposes upon their agents, the propagandists, the particular restrictions reflected in their work, and dictates the overall strategy of indirect and clandestine manipulation of the public mind; deception, in short. Only in that manner can the intelligence or rationality of man be overcome; a frontal, open attack will not do it. It must be neutralized or kept inactive by the concealment of pertinent facts; misdirected and misled through misinterpretation of a situation; or by-passed under certain circumstances—usually an emergency or crisis which the propagandist may not have foreseen or may not have had sufficient time to prepare for—by direct manipulation of the emotions. How the propagandists face such problems and what particular techniques they have devised to cope with them will be discussed in some detail later on in the book.

For the moment,

however, we may

summarize the results of our search for a clear conception of the nature of this activity. We have seen that the social condition which makes this activity appear and flourish is conflict. That the conflict is invariably between special interest groups which struggle for survival or expansion. That the nature of these groups makes it imperative that their particular, limited objectives be presented to the public as issues of general concern, and to do this they must resort to persuasion of a deceptive nature.

That such deception must be planned and executed in accordance with the demands of specific occasions, but always within the bounds imposed by the quality of the human mind; hence, it is deliberate. That the ultimate reward of such effort is the foreseeable and predetermined action that people may take at an appropriate time under the delusion that they are responding—intelligently—to a true reality. In general, therefore, this activity may be defined as the “Art of making people do what they would not do if they were in possession of all the facts in a situation.” This general definition, however, though it brings out the essential character of such effort—deception through concealment—unfortunately does not reveal all of its important features.

Who, for instance, is likely to practice this art; and for what

reasons?

How limited such a general view of the subject may be is

sharply illustrated by Lambert’s comment on Dr. Garnett’s definition.

By Any Other Name...

37

Having conceived of “propaganda” in similarly broad terms, Lambert chides Dr. Garnett, remarking: “The fact is that comparatively few persons or bodies set out to propagate falsehood, or even inaccuracy, deliberately.” * A rather wishful, and somewhat unrealistic statement at best. A no less unrealistic statement was made recently by George Gallup, who in a conference at Princeton University declared: “Still another argument is based upon the misconception that propaganda is necessarily based upon lies. . . . But the most effective propaganda, like the teachings of Christianity, can and should be based upon the truth.” “ At the risk of being too technical, we may construct a more substantial and less impressionistic definition of the activity we have surveyed, as follows: The controlled dissemination of deliberately distorted notions in an effort to induce action favorable to predetermined

ends of special in-

terest groups. And these special groups, it may be added, may vary in magnitude from that of a national state to that of a local “Citizens League” which is out to get something, or somebody. It will be noticed that in this definition all the components that we have discovered in the examples cited are included. And they must be included since they will always be present in any release of propagandistic origin or intent. They may each vary in intensity and obviousness, depending on the particular situation; but their presence, feeble or strong, could always be detected. There is one word in the definition that calls for some special comment, the term “notions.”

The term “information”

was considered

at

first, but it soon became apparent that that was too limiting a term, fastening as it does attention on the purely intellectual function, the thought area of the mind. The phrase “emotional symbols” was also discarded for the reason that it, in its turn, emphasizes unduly the play on feeling. The term “notion,” lacking any such restrictive reference to a specific activity of the mind, was chosen for that reason. It has an added advantage. The fact that it suggests untested knowledge, a loose opinion, or a hastily formed theory reveals in a sense the character of the content that these special promoters disseminate, hit-and-run ideas intended to do their work in the present, or the immediate future, and

expected to fade away and vanish once they have done their work— which is not necessarily the case. Speaking less technically, the activity may be looked upon as a

38

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

systematic and coordinated effort to induce behavior favorable to special interests by means other than the use of force or legitimate persuasion. Finally, there is that question of a label. What should one call this activity; what should one name it? Swift, incidentally, who had a considerable understanding of this “Art” as practiced in his day, used the term ‘“Pseudology.” He was obviously impressed by the false facades that such art tended to create. We could coin a new term—a common practice nowadays—which might also bring out its essential nature. We could call it “Pseudophony,” which would emphasize the fact that those who listen to propagandists are listening to false voices; or “Pseudosophy,” which would point to the false understanding and the false wisdom that is purveyed to the people. Or, again, bearing in mind the efects of such intellectual nourishment on the public mind, the bending and the twisting that that mind suffers at the hands of these promoters, we could name it “Psychostrophy”—an aptly sinister-sounding word, that. But does it really matter? “A rose by any other name... .” Following Lasswell’s example, we too may permit the label “propaganda” to serve as the verbal symbol of this activity. There is no risk in that, so long as we keep our mind’s eye on the deed, rather than the word.

or

CHAPTER

PROPAGANDA

4

COMES

OF AGE

“It is not that the people do not think because They

cannot

think,

although

thinking

is very

thinking is difficult.

easy,

because

they

are

possessed by false opinions and held captive by perverse sentiment.”— P. Fireman, Sound Thinking.

The definition of propaganda (the deed) as worked out in the previous chapter would, of course, apply only to that complex activity as practiced today. For, unlike Minerva who was born full-grown and complete with armor, propaganda took time to develop into its present form. Propaganda possesses a cluster of indispensable features. Each of these features has had a separate historical origin; and each may be found in association with non-propagandistic action, as is the case with the deception mentioned in connection with the magician’s art. Tracing these features back to the conditions that brought them forth, and that in time produced the amalgam that is propaganda, should disclose its evolutionary change as well as the historical path that it has followed. What then have been these conditions? In his book Human Society, SInesley Davis makes the following observation on baboon behavior:

“Whether male or female, young or

old, each animal adapts himself to his competitive social system partly through sexual reactions. By the use of sexual stimuli he can sometimes obtain an advantage that would otherwise be denied him by more dominant members of the group. For example, if a weaker baboon secures food and a stronger one comes to take it away from him, the weaker animal may present himself sexually no matter if his sex is the same as that of the aggressor. If he thus succeeds in diverting the more dominant animal’s attention, he can swallow his food. * What

is significant in this particular situation is, first, that from a

baboon’s point of view at least such diversionary tactics have a survival value. Secondly, what we have here may be a clue as to the relative historical roles, and inherent qualities, of persuasive as against coercive promotion. The latter no doubt preceded the former in the time scale of biological evolution just as the body preceded the mind. There must

39

Propaganda

40

Comes

of Age

have been a time during the “infant” stage of the mind when force was still superior as a means of survival to whatever fumbling mental efforts an organism may have resorted to. But at this baboon level, and perhaps earlier, the superiority of the mental over the physical is already discernible. Note, for instance, that it is the weaker animal that takes recourse to such diversion, and succeeds in surviving. Had it relied exclusively on force, it might have succumbed.

Hence, mental

means of adjustment in the struggle for survival may not only be superior to those of pure physical force, they may also—in the case of man—be destined to destroy in the future whatever potency or usefulness the latter might have had in the past. The future wars of man may indeed get colder and colder. Of more immediate significance may be the question that the reader probably has asked himself already: Did the weaker baboon use propaganda in this case? The answer, of course, is No.

It used deception to be sure, but that

is only one of the elements of the compound that is propaganda. Consider the nature of the conflict, for example, that brought on the deception. It was on the individual level, involving only those two baboons and no one else. Further, it lasted just for so long a time as it would take the one to swallow the food. It’s unlikely that the stronger one acquired a grudge against the weaker as a result of the encounter, or that the weaker one made a mental note to resort to the same tactics in the future, since they apparently were successful. Such a conflict is momentary and vanishes upon the satisfaction of the specific demands creating it. Very much unlike indeed the more permanent conflicts of social, institutional human interests which are in a sense the matrix of human propagandistic action—conflicts that possess continuity and permanence, and sometimes an increasing intensity. What this baboon tale reveals is that the roots of propaganda go deep into the subsoil of biology, and sometimes—as in this case of deception—into pre-human animality. But no one, of course, defines a tree by its roots alone. The tree of propaganda does not emerge above ground until the human level is reached, and the group level at that, for humans may resort to deception in an effort to resolve individual conflicts, but such tactics also could not be called propagandistic according to our definition. What we find in sub-human practices resembling propaganda are merely the beginnings, the roots, of what is to blossom later—hints of what is to come when the proper psychic and social conditions appear, as they do with man.

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The absence of the social condition—organized, continuous conflict—that might have generated propagandistic action within the baboon group has been noted. There is another factor, however, missing from such sub-human societies whose presence is a prerequisite to such

action.

It is a biological,

and

not

a social

one,

namely,

the

capacity of the individual member to communicate symbolically. Its absence among those species has the same restraining effect upon the possible rise of propaganda as the discontinuity of the conflicts between the individual members. In a sense it is the cause of the individual character of those conflicts. For, lacking the capacity to abstract and conceive such conflicts symbolically, the individuals are deprived of the opportunity to communicate them to others, and to perpetuate them by projecting them into the future. Their whole life indeed is being lived in a single dimension of time, the present. That is why their conflicts are of a momentary nature, and all their activities on a cash-and-carry basis, so to speak. For, the rewards of successful responses to pressing life demands are immediate; and so are the punishments that follow wrong guesses. Now consider the human world. Biological man does possess the capacity to abstract and to communicate symbolically; and social man confronts a time factor of three dimensions: the past, the present, and the future.

The two are, of course, interconnected; but, more important,

together they have served from time immemorial as the cornerstone upon which humanity has been erecting the edifice of culture. Aware of the past, man could learn, and preserve the lessons of past experience in symbolic forms. Capable of learning indirectly, that is from the experience of others, he could transmit such lessons to the future. In fact, he could plan the future by exercising a selective influence over the lessons to be transmitted. Here man faced a problem: the task of selecting and perpetuating the “right” answers to life’s demands, and rejecting the “wrong” ones. The problem is still very much with us and will no doubt challenge humanity for some time to come. H. G. Wells saw it as the major plight of modern man and fixed it in that striking phrase of his: “a race between education and catastrophe.” He could just as accurately have applied that characterization to the whole of human history. For it has been such a race from the beginning; it has only become more critical lately, with the outcome as yet unpredictable. Man has been presented with that problem ever since nature endowed

him with the capacity to make choices between alternate ways of life,

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a capacity that derives from the traits that appear with the emergence of man—imagination, reasoning faculty, and other purely human attributes. But why should such natural gifts lead to any difficulty at all? The answer is obvious. The very opportunity of choosing and preserving answers that have proved right, carries with it the possibility of making a mistake, of selecting and perpetuating answers that merely appear to be right, but in reality are fundamentally wrong. Answers that if accepted may lead man against nature and life in general, and even turn him against himself. Within that capacity lay not only the great promise of intelligent and successful adaptation to life, but also a dangerous suicidal potential. The two have been racing one another ever since. J. M. Reinhardt views this perennial human predicament as “The Paradox of Human Nature.” In a chapter under that title he cogently observes: “Man’s virtual hegemony over the rest of the animal kingdom and his far-flung adjustments to the forces of the natural world have been repeatedly emphasized in science and literature. Relatively less attention, however, has been given to the counterpart of his achievements, namely the tendency to be enslaved by the ideas and modes of adjustment to which his complex and plastic organism gives rise. “The more one tries to observe human behavior in its broader aspects and over a wide front, the more is he likely to be impressed with the fact that the complex and plastic nature of the human organism, which makes adjustment to a wide range of stimuli possible, holds the secret also of man’s imponderable blunders.” * Reinhardt also gives an illustration of how such blunders may be acted upon, and preserved from generation to generation: “; +. a primitive man devoid of a scientific attitude seeks an explanation of his own emotions, sensations, and feelings, as well as of the world about him, in the action of what he conceives to be supernatural powers. His life, therefore, is devoted primarily to the control of these powers. A difficulty of breathing, a cold clammy feeling, the flow of

blood from the head, a strange sensation he interprets as a vision. The ‘spirits’ have spoken; a sacred placed has been found on the earth. A stone is set up to mark the spot, and hither the elect come to commune with the ‘spirits.’ Techniques of control are evolved and become crystallized in ceremonials, rituals and taboos. The potential mental plasticity of the young is made rigid by the implantation of these tech-

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niques and a belief in their validity, as a sacred heritage. Now let anyone try to challenge this system of adjustment.” * This transformation of an initial wrong guess into a social institution and a powerful traditional force is the result of a social process at work in the primitive world. Man himself, at this stage, is unconscious of such a process; just as he is unaware of the fact that he may be building up institutions and customs—culture in general—on false assumptions. Such error, therefore, would come under the category we have called “natural”; and its perpetuation would necessarily be entirely unintentional. Hence, that part of primitive man’s behavior which comes under the influence of such error, cannot be explained in strictly propagandistic terms. Propaganda in the modern sense had yet to appear. The primitive stage, however, made its appearance possible, in fact

inevitable. For within it lay in an embryonic state the elements that were to fuse later and form the many-sided activity that is propaganda. It was merely a question of time before man would become aware of the existence of error, and its power within society, and begin to manufacture

it deliberately. It was also only a matter of time before the personal interests of a chief, a medicine man, or a trader would be transformed into institutional

political, religious, and economic interests and enter the competition for power and wealth. Were it possible to determine at what particular moment in history these two events occurred—and they may not have occurred simultaneously—we could definitely establish the time when propaganda entered the stream of human life in full force. As it is, we can only infer that the social soil of primitive man could not have allowed it to develop fully, and that that world itself had to be transformed into something higher—civilization—before propaganda could emerge as a fully developed enterprise. We do find it so developed early in the life of the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia at a time when all the conditions that could generate it were already in existence. Centuries of agricultural experience and activity had resulted in products other than those of the soil. Life had become settled, with towns and cities dotting the area of that “fertile crescent.” Their medicine men and priests, the only intermediaries between men and the spirits or deities that controlled the phenomena of nature, were gradually being transformed into a powerful priesthood class. The economic surplus brought on by the neolithic revolution, or the shift from a hunting to an agricultural economy, had

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to be stored up and protected against the ever-present threat of an attack. A class of warriors thus gradually came into being. It had also to be distributed within a society that was slowly losing its earlier homogeneity and was becoming stratified as a result of a division of labor proceeding at an increasing rate under the impact and stimulation of a settled urban life. What the precise relation was between their religious interpretations of man, nature, and the gods, and an expanding economic consciousness engendered by the increase in trade and contact between communities once distant, and perhaps, unknown,

is hard to tell.

But

we can safely surmise that both had something to do with the appearance of a political consciousness, the idea that over and above one’s town or city lay a political reality, the state, personified by the king, or pharaoh, who himself was either appointed by the gods, or was one. Thus the social climate for the rise of propaganda was already in existence in those early civilizations. It is no surprise to read in Ralph Turner’s The Great Cultural Traditions that: “Inasmuch as literate learning was a monopoly of the ruling classes, it served as a means of control over the masses, who commonly regarded all writing as magical. For these reasons the written works that were used in connection with state rituals and the other public acts of sovereigns generally contained assertions which justified their power; these works were, in fact, an official propaganda. Military defeats were described as victories. Victories in battles never fought were claimed. One Egyptian pharaoh declared that he was able to shoot an arrow through five inches of copper plating, a prowess which was, of course, not to be tested unless one was wearing about six inches of metal. The favorite propoganda devise was an interview between a dead ancestor who was believed to be a god and a living king; in the colloquy the dead ancestor praised the king and urged his subjects to be faithful to him if they wished to escape from great evils. The priests, who had their own tricks to fool the populace, joined in this official propaganda. It was also deeply embedded in education, for the materials set before boys learning to write were generally passages that supported the supreme power.” * Did the Egyptians have a word for such practices? It is an interesting

question; but it is hardly possible that they did, considering that they were even slow in abstracting qualities of the natural phenomena they had to deal with—such as the land that they had to measure and allot annually after the spring floods—let alone such intangible, socio-psychological matters in which they were moreover so deeply immersed.

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Oddly enough, even the Greeks did not leave us one, adept as they were in naming things. They too practiced this art extensively, but in their writings they show only a superficial awareness of it. They sensed both its presence among them and its potency, but did not understand it. They failed to isolate it as a specific social force and formulate a concept for it. It will be rewarding,

however,

to look into some

of their exploits

along that line. The all-too-familiar Trojan horse episode naturally comes first to one’s mind. But was it wholly a propaganda coup? In its entirety, it was not; for it was primarily a military stratagem. For ten years the Greeks had failed to break through the towering walls of Troy by frontal attacks, so they hit upon the idea of creating what we today would call a “Fifth Column.” Unable apparently to find any recruits among the Trojans, they loaded some of their troops into that wooden horse, and when the unsuspecting Trojans took the horse within their gates, the Greeks had their “Fifth Column,” and Troy. This, as said, was a military maneuver; and the Trojans were as surprised as any general would be surprised if his troops were suddenly attacked from an unexpected direction. But the success or failure of the whole plan depended largely on some non-military factors. What would induce the Trojans, for instance, to play into the hands of the Greeks and transport the horse inside their walls? For, once the Greeks conceived the idea of the loaded horse, they did face the problem of having it transported within the city. Obviously, they could not do that themselves; the Trojans had to do it. And here is where propaganda entered the picture, for it was a problem in persuasion. The Greeks solved it by the simple device of dedicating the horse to the Trojan gods. The Trojans were thus definitely committed. They could not risk offending their gods by not accepting it, even though as some of them suspected, including their priest Laocoon, there was a chance the Greeks may not be as pious as they pretended. Then there was the final and most crucial stage of the plan. The Greeks had conceived the plan, and they assured themselves of the success of the first stage—transportation of the horse within the walls— by dedication to the gods. But then they faced a real problem: the horse and the hidden troops are within the walls, but how can the latter accomplish their mission and open the gates for the rest of the troops to enter? How could the success of this vital step be insured? An attack upon the guards would be problematical under the best of circumstances.

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To minimize the possibility of failure at this stage, they resorted to a second propagandistic maneuver which had the ironical result of committing the Trojans once again to an act which under normal circumstances should have been attempted by the Greeks themselves. Having purposely built the horse larger than any of the Trojan gates, they forced the Trojans to tear down one of their gates thus leaving that part of their What followed was inevitable; and once again the wall vulnerable. superiority of persuasive means over the mere use of force was definitely proven. What is also of interest is that here is one of the earliest examples of the coordination of propaganda with military action, and of the contribution the former could make to the latter. For the Greeks achieved in a matter of a few days what they had failed to accomplish by mere reliance on force in the ten years previous. Homer, of course, did not leave us a “‘propagandistic” analysis of that particular event. He related the sequence of the action as it occurred. Another ancient who has given us a similar, purely descriptive account of the effects of what undoubtedly was propagandistic activity at a later day in Greek life was Thucydides. His comment on the impact of the Peloponnesian War upon the minds of his contemporaries runs as follows: “So civil war broke out in the cities, and the later revolutionaries,

with previous examples before their eyes, devised new ideas which went far beyond the earlier ones, so elaborate were their enterprises, so novel their revenges. Words changed their ordinary meanings and were construed in new senses. Reckless daring passed for the courage of a loyal partisan, far-sighted hesitation was the excuse of a coward, moderation was the pretext of the unmanly, the power to see all sides of a question was complete inability to act. Impulsive rashness was held the mark of a man, caution in conspiracy was a specious excuse for avoiding action. A violent attitude was always to be trusted, its opponents were suspect. To succeed in a plot was shrewd, it was still more clever to divine one: but if you devised a policy that made such success or suspicion needless, you were breaking up your party and showing fear of your opponents.” ° Had Thucydides stood where we stand today, he no doubt would have understood the character of those techniques the “later revolutionaries” had been using to “devise” new ideas and bring about such changes in the meaning of traditional concepts, such as freedom, equality,

and democracy, in a modern version of the Peloponnesian War. Nevertheless, his account of the widespread mental confusion during his

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period is sufficient evidence that propaganda was generally practiced, even though not thoroughly understood. The one man among those ancients who came close to appreciating both the nature and role of propaganda, though not close enough to identify its distinct qualities and hence name it, was Plato. It will be recalled that Plato sends Socrates on a quest for justice. The latter, after examining some of its attributes as reflected in the conduct of individuals, establishes the principle that justice could be discerned more easily in the State than in the individual. The State is larger than the individual. “Then,” says Socrates, “in the larger, the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them.” The greatest quantity of justice is likely to be found in the ideal State. So Socrates, with the prodding of some youthful, vigorous minds proceeds to construct that ideal State. But what would an ideal State be based on? A basic principle must be established. Here Plato’s genius showed itself, for he propounded a principle that was not to be rediscovered and given scientific validity until modern times, namely, that the State (or Society, as we would say

today) is a reflection, an outthrow of man’s innate nature. Had he the biological knowledge we possess today, he may have gone into the description of human nature in what we would consider an acceptable manner. Lacking such knowledge, however, he resorted to the use of a “falsehood,” as he said; propaganda, as we would say today. He has Socrates speak to Glaukon in the following words: “How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke—just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city? “What sort of lie? he said. “Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician tale of what has often occurred before now in other places, (as the poets say, and have made the world believe,) though not in our time, and I do not know whether such an event could ever happen again, or could now even be made probable if it did. “How your words seem to hesitate on your lips! “You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you have heard. “Speak, he said, and fear not.

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“Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the

soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only”.° One cannot help get the feeling here that it is not Socrates really who is ashamed

to look

Glaukon

in the face, or whose

words

seem

to

“hesitate” on his lips, but rather Plato. He goes on to complete the tale nevertheless. “You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were going to tell. “True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have only told you half. Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of those he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above

all else, that there is nothing which

they should

so anxiously

guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity of the race.... Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it ? “Not in the present generation, he replied; there is no way of accomplishing this: but their sons may be made to believe in the tale, and their sons’ sons, and posterity after them.” * Obviously Plato was not only cognizant of the existence of the art of progaganda, but to judge from his last sentence, he also had a very good idea of the potency of such an instrument especially in the hands of those who govern. It was the suggestion, incidentally, that the use of falsehood by those who rule should be condoned if done for the benefit of society, that placed Plato so highly in the esteem of twentieth century totalitarians, who thus could find adequate justification for their Ministries of Propaganda. And in the case of the Nazis, that phrase, “purity of race,” offered additional support of course to their propagandistic calls for racial purification.

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That, however, should not hide the fact that Plato also offers some

formidable arguments to the believer in modern democracy. If the core of our democratic ideal consists in recognizing the innate worth of the individual, and awarding him the place and privileges in society commensurate with his innate capabilities, Plato does not only approve of such an ideal, but establishes it as the criterion of perfect justice. For a society whose members occupy positions within its structure in conformity with their nature and talents, is the ideal society, devoid of disharmony, frictions, and conflicts among its citizens, since to each individual shall be given by the society what nature had already prescribed for him at birth. Further, to make sure that such a state of perfect justice will not be lost once attained, Plato prescribes for his ideal society a mechanism— a sort of a safety valve: Silver sons of golden parents, and golden sons of silver parents should be given a place in society according to their own nature and not according to that of their parents. His ideal society, therefore, possesses a flexibility and dynamism not unlike those characterizing contemporary democracy; and very much unlike, indeed, the frozen, monolithic systems of modern totalitarians. With that provision, Plato weakens the strength of his potentially racist doctrine, and the importance of his “royal lie”; at no expense, in the process, to his organic theory of human society. But the question still remains: Why did he have to resort to that Big Lie at all? It is possible, of course, that Plato, a philosopher and a poet, and extremely fond of fables and allegories, considered this Phoenician tale as merely incidental to his main purpose—simply a device to broach the main subject that his Republic concerns itself with, namely, the ideal state. His own comments about the tale seem to point to such a supposition. He places its origin outside of Greece, and at some

indefinite, remote time.

He

undermines its plausibility by suggesting that it would in all likelihood be rejected. And he gives it a death blow by having Socrates himself call it a downright lie. In a sense, he may be warning the reader not to pay too much attention to it but to go on to the serious matter at hand, the search for a principle upon which the concept of justice may be erected (that social man should coincide with natural man), and the place of

justice in the ideal state. There is a second possibility, however, not too inconsistent with the

one just mentioned. Plato had seen Athenian democracy degenerate; he had observed the fickleness and inefficiency of popular rule at its worst. It may be then that he was attempting to introduce some order,

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some stability, into the structure of the Athenian society.

of Age

Perhaps, in

short, he was only playing the role of a social reformer, and since the

innovations he was suggesting bore too close a resemblance to some of the features of the society of his city’s worst enemy, Sparta, he may have used that tale as a decoy to divert the minds of the Athenians and insure the probability of their acceptance. Had this been his true purpose, we should give him more credit as a propagandist than he has

been hitherto allotted. To move on in history, we may skip over the Hellenistic period and Alexander’s practice of worshipping at the temple of any god as he conquered city after city, and come to the Roman period. We have seen that we have inherited the term propaganda from the Romans, though to them it had a different meaning. Did they practice the art? We don’t have to delve extensively into their literature, or into their history of civil strife and wars. We may let Polybius, the Greek historian of the second century B.C., who had spent seventeen years in Rome as a hostage, describe the system of social controls the Romans had devised: “The greatest advantage which the Roman system [of religion] has over others seems to me to lie in their grasp of religious questions. What the rest of the world contemns is, I think, a cementing force with

them—I mean superstition. This side of Religion has received such a state of melodramatic pomp with them, both in private and in civic life, that further exaggeration is out of the question. Some may think this remarkable; but I regard it as an instrument of government. If you could compose a State entirely of cultured individuals, such an instrument would doubtless be unnecessary. But every democracy is fickle, full of anarchical greed, irrational passion, and violence. Your only means of holding it together are the fear of the Unseen World, and all such-like melodramatic show.” * And this was before the age of the Caesars; before the transformation of Rome into a state not very different in its main outlines from the oriental monarchies of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Twenty-one centuries later the same thought—“If you could compose a State entirely of cultured individuals, such an instrument would doubtless be unnecessary” —is expressed by Lambert: “In an ideal world no propaganda would be necessary, because the individual would be able to recognize what was true and what was to his own interest. In the modern world . . . propaganda seems necessary in order to make people act before they think; or rather before they have

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had time to complete their thought process. would be equal, independent,

In the ideal society men

and self-reliant; but in the societies that

we know they require varying degrees of control and government, ranging from the manipulation necessary under a democracy to the de- | crees issued under an autocracy.” ° Polybius, incidentally, relates a propaganda maneuver that would make psychological warfare palatable to any modern general. While in Rome, he befriended Scipio, later known as Scipio Africanus. He became Scipio’s adviser, and companion in arms. As such, he followed Scipio in his campaign against Carthage. He gives us this account of how New Carthage was taken: “Scipio Africanus was planning a surprise attack upon the seaport town of New Carthage. His force was smaller than that of the enemy and he found that the morale of his soldiers was none too good. He made an accurate study of the tides and discovered at exactly what time they would be lowest. By fording this stretch of water the Romans would be able to attack the town at a vulnerable point, it being protected on all sides by impregnable walls. Scipio told his men that he had just talked with Neptune and that the old sea-god had assured the Romans of his cooperation. At the proper moment Scipio ordered his men to march into the water and to their surprise they found it shallow and their enthusiasm knew no bounds. With indomitable courage and vigor they forded the inlet and attacked New Carthage, winning an overwhelming and unexpected victory.” ” Not very different indeed from an old Pharaoh holding an interview with a dead ancestor, or a god. As a matter of fact, as one moves from one period into cities one begins to perceive a certain similarity in the ways propagandists operate. One discovers, of course, that new tricks, and new devices

may be added to their repertoire as history unfolds, yet a certain pattern seems to persist. This is not surprising naturally, since the laws underlying human thought and conduct do not vary, and they do set limits on those who try to manipulate the human mind whether they know them or not. What does change perceptibly, however, is the content, the notions that the propagandists deal with and spread. Old symbols fade away and disappear, and new ones emerge to give a different The meaning to old activities and interests, or to describe the new. sensitive and mind public the of pulse the propagandists, always close to to such changes, alter their wares accordingly, and sometimes, as in the case of revolutionary propagandists, ahead of their times.

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Thus it is not surprising as we move out of the Roman and into the next great period of Western civilization to find the same old propaganda bottles only containing a somewhat different brew. Power, prestige, and privilege are still being fought for by noble and king, Emperor and Pope, and by all and the infidel, but in the search for popular support these objectives are now being disguised, and cloaked in symbols which derive their strength from a way of life that places its goals in another world, the Christian heaven.

Economic,

political, military, and other

interests and activities are now being interpreted in religious terms. In the gaining of decision by one or another of these contenders propaganda plays no minor role. Out of that age comes an exhortation such as this: Oh ye men of the Franks, who live beyond the mountains!

God hath favored

you in many ways, in your happy land as in your steadfast faith, and valor. To you our words are spoken, and by you our message will be passed on... From the borders of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople ominous tidings have gone forth. Often, before now, have they come to my ears. An accursed race, emerging from the kingdom of the Persians, a barbarous people, estranged from God, has invaded the lands of the Christians in the east and has depopulated them by fire, steel, and ravage. These invaders are Turks and Arabs... . These Turks have led away many Christians, captives, to their own country; they have torn down the churches of God everywhere, or used them for their own

rites. What more shall I say to you? Listen. The invaders befoul the altars with the filth out of their bodies, they circumcize Christians and pour the blood of the circumcision upon the altars or into the baptismal fonts. They stable their horses in these churches, which are now withdrawn from the service of God... Even now the Turks are torturing Christians, binding them and filling them with arrows, or making them kneel, bending their heads, to try if their swordsmen can cut through their necks with a single blow of a naked sword. What shall I

say of the ravishing of the women? To ... Set forth, then, upon the way to the evil race, and keep it for yourself. That Jerusalem, fruitful above all other lands for us; there He was buried... .

speak of this is worse than to holy Sepulcher; wrest that land land which flows with milk and where rested the Lord. There

Fear not torture, for therein lies the crown

of martyrdom.

The way

be silent. from the honey— He died is short,

the struggle brief, the reward everlasting. Yea, I speak now with the voice of the prophet, “Arm thyself, O mighty one!” Take up your arms, valiant sons, and go.”

In no period of human history was forgery practiced with such artistry and abandon as during the same Christian era. Rival claims to spiritual superiority between the bishops of Rome and those in the Eastern cities, questions of spiritual sovereignty and temporal power in the West, all yielded an untold number of forged documents and claims from

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the eighth century onwards. It is a fascinating tale indeed, this story of propaganda throughout the medieval period, but of no great significance to us as neither the methods nor the content changed throughout those centuries.

Nor, as a matter of fact, was there any change in the source

from which such propaganda emanated. Those who wielded this weapon continued to be, as at the beginning of the period, those who occupied positions of power; those at the top. The use of propaganda, at least on a sizeable scale, by people other than those who ruled was yet to come. For almost a thousand years it remained the exclusive instrument of, by, and for state or church, or both.

It is difficult to determine exactly when others besides the rulers began to use propaganda extensively. For the conditions that brought that occurrence about were slow in arising, and they were many. ‘The medieval synthesis had to be broken. The rise of commerce and trade, and the rebirth and growth of urban life, the desire to explore the unknown parts of the world, the rise of a middle class, the rediscovery of the arts and thought of the ancient world, the birth of the scientific attitude, the Protestant Reformation,

the struggles between the nobility

and the kings on the Continent and in England, and not least, the invention of the press and the rise of literacy, all these events had to occur before the people could become aware of propaganda, and the monopoly of its use by the power classes could be broken. But some reflective minds do appear at the beginning of the modern world (c. the 1500s) and pierce through the propagandist’s protective armor to catch a glimpse of his art, and stimulate that awareness. Machiavelli (1469-1527) in Italy writes The Prince, and his description of the unscrupulous political trickery practiced in his day spreads widely the knowledge of such tactics not only among the rulers—who may not have needed such knowledge—but among the people as well. In England, Francis Bacon

(1561-1626)

devotes some of his time to advise,

through his essays, not rulers alone, but anyone who may happen to read them, how to conduct negotiations with cunning.

Both these men had captured the essence of propagandistic technique, but of the two Bacon supplied a more detailed description of tricks that did not need the support of political power behind them to be effective. These devices were destined to be harnessed and utlized by propagandists operating in areas other than the political as the modern world unfolded. Consider, for instance, what he says in his essay on “Cunning”. “It is a point of cunning . . . that when you have anything to obtain of present dispatch, you entertain and amuse the party with whom you

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deal with some other discourse, that he be not too much awake to make

objections. I know a counsellor and secretary, that never came to Queen Elizabeth of England with bills to sign, but he would always first put her into some discourse of state, that she might the less mind the bills... “In things that a man would not be seen in himself, it is a point of cunning to borrow the name of the world; as to say, “The world says’, or, ‘There is a speech abroad.’ “I knew another that, when he came to have speech, he would pass over that he intended most, and go forth, and come back again, and speak of it as a thing he had almost forgot... . “But these small wares and petty points of cunning are infinite, and it were a good deed to make a list of them; for that nothing doth more hurt in a State than that cunning men pass for wise.” “On Negotiating”, Bacon comments: “If you would work any man, you must either know his nature or fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him; or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him; or those that have interest in him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for. In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once, but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.” It was indeed a matter of time again, before these “small wares and petty points of cunning” were assiduously collected and listed to be used by propagandists as conditions demanded. In spite of his meticulous treatment of such tactics, Bacon did not apparently visualize the possibility of such techniques being systematically and methodically exploited by an organized group, or groups. Like his predecessor Machiavelli, whose bag of tricks were intended for use by an individual—his prince—Bacon too was thinking of their possible use by individuals in their private negotiations. In fact, his approach was in a sense more restricted than Machiavelli’s as the latter’s prince did at least represent an organized interest, the state. A broader, more comprehensive, almost contemporary view of propaganda does not appear until the beginning of the following century when its practice attracted the attention of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Propaganda was still being used predominantly within the political sphere, but during Swift’s time it was undergoing a sort of fission: the

“outs” had begun to use it as well as the “ins.”

That it was still chiefly

Propaganda

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35

a political weapon, however, is strongly evidenced by Swift’s own title of an essay he had published in the Examiner (November 1710): “The Art of Political Lying.” In this essay, after attributing the origin of lying to the devil, who

“seems, like other great inventors, to have lost

much of his reputation, by the continual improvements that have been made upon him,” he confesses he is ignorant of the past of this art. “Who first reduced lying into an art, and adapted it to politics, is not so clear from history, although I have made some diligent inquiries. I shall therefore consider it only according to the modern system, as it has been cultivated these twenty years past in the southern part of our own island.” Then Swift shows a deep understanding of what this art can accomplish. For example: “It can conquer kingdoms without fighting, and sometimes with the loss of a battle. It gives and resumes employments; can sink a mountain to a molehill, and raise a molehill to a mountain:

has presided for

many years at committees of elections; can wash a blackmore white; make a saint of an atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign ministers with intelligence, and raise or let fall the credit of the nation.” Further, he was perfectly aware of the potency of the controlled, and timely lie—of the effectiveness of a well-planned and sustained propaganda attack: “Some people may think, that such an accomplishment as this can be of no great use to the owner, or his party, after it has been often practiced, and is become notorious; but they are widely mistaken. Few lies carry the inventor’s mark, and the most prostitute enemy to truth may spread a thousand, without being known for the author; besides, as the vilest

writer has his readers, so the greatest liar has his believers; and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect; like a man, who has thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like the physician, who has found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”

Two things may be noted in connection with this essay. First, it apparently never occurred to Swift to label this art “propaganda.” Instead, he had to coin the phrase “Political Lying’”—a phrase which subsequently evolved into “Political Warfare” to designate in the British

Propaganda

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tradition the deliberate attempt to mould and manipulate the minds of people whether in peace or war. The explanation for this should be obvious, of course, in view of that word’s history. The term was very commonly used at that time, but as it has been pointed out, it had specific reference to the doctrines that the Catholic Church was busily trying to spread. There was no reason, therefore, for Swift to appropriate a term which

had a concrete

and specific meaning

in one

field, the

religious, to label a phenomenon he had perceived in another, the political. It was more natural for him to coin a new phrase. It is further likely that no one at his time could think of “propaganda” without automatically adding “de fide” to it to complete a unitary thought. The second matter that bears notice is the very choice of the adjective, “political.” Now, obviously, he—like many others before him—was very much aware of the fact that lying has had a permanent place in human history. But in this essay, Swift gives one the impression that he has discovered a new species of lying, lying of a higher order: organized, planned, institutionalized—an art.

That he discovered this calculated,

systematic use of the lie in the realm of politics is indicative that in his time such activity was still predominantly the concern of those at the top; it was still indulged in by those in power against those of their social equals who were attempting to dislodge them, and by the latter, in order to supplant the former. The social and political developments that would allow propaganda to spill over from the political area and slowly saturate the whole of the social structure as it does today had yet to come. However, practically two years after the publication of his essay, we find an advertisement in the same Examiner (October 1712) announcing

the forthcoming publication of “A Treatise of the Art of Political Lying.”” The author? It is difficult to tell. Swift writes: “Arbuthnot (Dr.) has sent me, from Windsor, a pretty Discourse upon Lying; and I have ordered the printer to come for it. . . . It is very pretty, but not so obvious to be understood.” Were that pamphlet available today (it may have never been published), we would have understood its contents very well, for in an ‘“ab-

stract” contained in the advertisement is a remarkable conception of propaganda such as only our present-day social scientists have captured in theory and which totalitarians have put into operation. This is what we are told in the “abstract”: “The author, in his preface, makes some very judicious reflections upon the original of arts and sciences: that at first they consist of

U.S. Propaganda Odd Jobs Pay Reporters $175,000 Covers 5-Year Fees to Stringers; Practice Questioned on The Hill

When the subject came up. again at this year’s 1962 budget hearings, Subcommittee Member Frank T. Bow (Rep. Ohio) wanted to know why the USIA's three full-time New York reporters couldn’t cover the New

By Fred Bertram America’s propaganda arm has built a nation-wide backstop of newspaper reporters and other free-lance writers to supplement its own full-time force.

The United

States

Informa-

tion Agency’s 1962 budget hearings showed $30,239 paid out to free-lance writers in the year under review. Over a 5-year period, some $175,000 went to

the USIA’s “propaganda resery-

ists”

back

to their home

countries.

For example, from Don Ashbaugh of the Las Vegas Review Journal, 800 words on the King of Nepal’s visit to Las Vegas and vicinity, $25; from Allan Hoschar of the Des Moines Register, 700 words on visit of the Polish Minister of Agriculture, $25. “Special Articles,” make up

the third and smallest classification of free-lance production. Examples: From Managing Edi-

The USIA's “stable,” as the tor Robert J. Landry, of Variety, budget probers have referred to an article on “Television—Live it, has been reported as running around 300 members from year to year. Some reporters pick up under $100 a year. Others have earned $1,000 and $2,000 and

more a year. Washington Mill

From across

free-lance the

country,

typewriters the propa-

ganda material funnels into the USIA’'s Washington editorial mill at 1776 Pennsylvania Avenue. From there it is filtered abroad to United States Information Service offices in close to 100 countries around the world. There translated into loeal languages, the Hometown-U.S.A. products reappear in foreign newspapers, form the basis for local radio broadcasts or are used in USIS publications abroad. These free-lance word-pictures of the American scene feed into the nation’s propaganda mill in three main forms. There is what the USIA calls its “General Current Events Coverage.” For example, From Russell L. Faist of the Cleveland News, 500 words on a crippled Negro nominated for the Carnegie medal for rescuing a drowning white man from Lake Erie, for which

Mr. Faist received $20; from Robert Breen of the Baltimore Sun, 800 words on dedication of a new Leprosy Research Laboratory at Johns Hopkins, $25. Particularly important for propaganda purposes, the USIA has indicated, is its “Visitor Coverage.” Stories of foreign visitors to the U.S. are relayed

EDITOR

& PUBLISHBR

writing for domestic clients either ignore the angle we would be interested in or the story is written for a domestic audience 30 it is not too useful for us. ‘Where we can use the wire services we do,” At this year’s 1962 budget hearings, Subcommittee Chair-

— Filmed — Tape,” $75; from Charles A. Clay of the Raleigh

(N. C.) News & Observer, a story on textile education in the United States, with emphasis on the Textile School at North Carolina State University, $60. One Editor's View

Not all managing editors approve of their reporters working or filing for the U.S. Information Agency on the side, Publicity received by a few reporters at budget hearings on The Hill

is said to have disturbed some publishers, A House Appropriations Subcommittee heard from a USIA spokesman of one managing editor who had even spoken in public against the practice, complaining that a newspaper reporter could not be entirely

objective if he was “making little commissions of $20 and $25 in his spare time for the USIA.” The USIA spokesman said that while this editor’s opinion

‘York stories. More than $4500 had been paid out during the

year for more than 300 New York stories. This colloquy took place: Mr. Hutcuison. (John N. Director, Press and Publications «Service, USIA.) One of the people in New York covers the United Nations full time. Two of them cover general news in New York full time. But there are frequent occasions when it is more economical to buy material from a writer for a given purpose than to send and maintain another staff person in New York. Hutchison,

Mr. Bow. You have one at the UN and the other two are general reporters. Mr. HuTcHIson, Yes sir, Mr. Bow. Why can they not cover these stories? Mr. Hutcuison. They do not have the time to do it, sir. They are engaged full time as it is. Mr. Bow. In doing what?

Mr. Hutcnuison.

In writing

stories. OSD

Mr. Bow. Harold A. Kein has written a number of stories in New York, Why could not your local people have handled the stories Mr. Klein has written,

Mr.

Cannon.

(Thomas

L.

Cannon, Deputy Director, Editorial) A great many of these stories, sir, are evening and

weekend

events and also occur

during the day when both of our reporters are assigned to other stories.

man John J. Rooney, (Dem. New

York), got into the record that jn the: fiscal year 1961, the Associated Press had been paid $50,837, Reuters $32,100 and

UPI

$42,104,

a total of some

$125,000 for the year,

For ‘Voice’ Use From Reuters, the USIA suid the general news service was purchased essentially for use by

the

Voice

of

America,

From

UPI the trunk service was purchased for $37,377 and the Washington City news service for $4800.

The AP wire services are bought only for information and may not be used, the USIA said. AP services are purchased for information in Washington, in the Near East and South Asia and in West Europe.

The subcommittee learned that

the terms of agreement under which USIS posts in Western Europe subscribe to the AP service preclude use by USIS of AP news material. “The service is subscribed to for information and to assure that posts’ press output does not duplicate material transmitted by the U.S.

wire services.”

e

Harry Brooks Elected To Montana Shrine Gtactkx PARK, Mont.

Montana State Press Association elected the late Harry B-. Brooks to the Montana Newspaper Hall of Fame Mr. Brooks, who died of a heart attack in 1944, was nominated by Dan Whetstone, pub-

lisher of the Cut Bank Pionser Press. A native of Minnesota, who

graduated from the University of Minnesota at the age of 18, Mr. Brooks began his Montana newspaper career in 1905 as manager of the Chinook BulleMr. Bow then called for the was not the majority view, the tin. He purchased the Chinook workload of two of the New Agency fully respected his views. The same editor’s newspaper had York reporters for nine specific Opinion in 1906 and published it supplied considerable material days, broken down according to until 1928, He was editor of the to the Agency free of charge, it “what they did on those days, Havre Daily News from 1928 to what they were writing and 1934 when he joined the Great was added. Falls Tribune as an editorial Criticism of the USIA's habit where they were.” As a subscriber to the wire writer, of hiring outside reporters crops The hall of fame is at the up from time to time during the services, the USIA has been yearly budget hearings on Capi- asked at budget hearings why Montana State University Jourtol Hill. The Agency indicated wire service coverage couldn’t nalism School in Missoula, be used in place of the free-lance Fred J. Martin, publisher of that it would be much more the Park County News of expensive to try to cover network, nationally-seattered events by “We have found from experi- Livingston, was elected presisending its own reporters around ence,” a USIA spokesman re- dont of the Montana State Press plied, “that the wire services Association for 1961-62. the country. 15 for September 2, 1961

se Use of Wire Services

The above appeared in Editor & Publisher of September 2, 1961. The practices referred to are still being continued by the U. S. Information Agency, and their soundness is questionable on more than the grounds indicated above.

57

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scattered theorems and practices, which are handed about among the masters and only revealed to the filii artis, till such time as some great genius appears, who collects these disjointed propositions, and reduces them into a regular system. That this is the case of that noble and useful art of Political Lying, which in this last age having been enriched with several new discoveries, ought not to lie any longer in rubbish and confusion, but may justly claim a place in the Encyclopaedia, especially such as serves for a model of education for an able politician. That he proposes to himself no small stock of fame in future ages; in being the first who has undertaken this design; and for the same reason he hopes the imperfection of his work will be excused.” In the main body of the “abstract” are to be found suggestions for the efficient operation of what we today would call a Propaganda Machine, a Ministry of Public Enlightenment, or one of Public Information. The seeds for all such mammoth establishments of twentieth century political life are all there. Considering some practical questions, the author asks the following: “Whether the right of coinage of political lies be wholly in the government?” And he answers it in the negative, stating that “as ministers do sometimes use tools to support their power, it is but reasonable that the people should employ the same weapon to defend themselves, and pull them down.” Whether there are different types, or classes of falsehoods that could be sorted and studied separately in terms of their peculiar character with reference to their degree of possible acceptance or rejection by the people, the author devotes considerable space, answering in the affirmative. He even names some of the various types, such as the “prodigious,” the “encouraging,” the “detractory,” and the

“defamatory,” and suggests “precepts about the inventing, spreading, and propagating the several sorts of them.” No less acute are the author’s comments on the selection of the different types of individuals who may be expected to perform the different tasks in this “management of lying.” The spreading of a lie requires a different sort of a personality than that of the person who invents it; as does the collecting of information upon which the lie may be built. Not anybody, again, could be an effective “whisperer’—our rumor man. The author clearly feels very strongly against a promiscuous, haphazard recruitment of such agents, for he “inveighs severely against the folly of parties, in retaining scoundrels, and men of low genius, to retail their lies,” or individuals in general who “seem to be wholly ignorant in the rules of pseudology, and not at all qualified for so weighty a trust!”

Propaganda

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Since Swift was a satirist it is, of course, possible that he wrote in that

manner not so much to inform the people as to strike against his political opponents. The whole tone of the “abstract” is highly satirical, bristling with innuendo and cryptic allusions to some of his opponents. He might, in short, have been a propagandist himself, rather than a writer about propaganda. But would that, in itself, negate the possibility that he may have noticed such practices as he is presumably advocating carried on by his contemporaries? Conditions in England in the 17th and 18th centuries, with the fierce conflicts for political power and prestige taking place, were not at all unfavorable to the pursuit of such machinations. He probably stretched his imagination, no doubt consciously, a little further than the actual facts warranted, but he must have had some factual evidence before him that gave his imagination that impetus. Did Swift's ideas on how propaganda should be pursued have any influence on its subsequent evolution? Some rather interesting developments have taken place since his time; and it is difficult to think of any that appear to run contrary to his suggestions. In fact, twentieth century propaganda, especially as practiced by the totalitarians, seems to have met fully Swift’s specifications with reference to such matters as, organization, recruitment, tailoring and timely release of lies. But to what extent such developments came as a result of his suggestions, and in what measure they were the inevitable by-products of fundamental political and social changes and the cumulative experience in the handling of propaganda is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate. Several of these developments are worth looking into. Reference to the use of propaganda within the political area during the early part of the 18th century by others than those in positions of power—the “outs”— has already been made. As that century unfolded, under the stimulus of the liberal movements both in England and on the continent, propaganda became increasingly the weapon the people employed to strike against rulers they considered tyrannical, or in any way objectionable. They had no other recourse except revolution—and that the two were not at all incompatible, but on the contrary highly complementary, was adequately illustrated by both the American and the French revolutions. These events may not have occurred, at least not at the time they did, had not men like Charles Adams and Thomas Paine in the colonies, and the French philosophers on the continent ripened matters considerably through their propaganda. The founding of the democratic state that followed these two upheavels brought on also the recognition of the tight of the people to take recourse to propaganda measures against

60

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those in the government, if the latter could not be dislodged from their positions through normal procedures, the periodic elections; a right that, it may be recalled, Swift, even in his time, had considered “reasonable.”

A different question, however, and a delicate one was posed by the establishment of such a state, namely, Has the government the right to resort to propaganda in its dealings with the people? It was inevitable that once the political struggles against king and noble had subsided, the familiarity the people had acquired with propaganda as a weapon should induce them to use it in other, and now more

pressing, conflicts.

The industrial revolution

and the intellectual de-

velopment in the 19th century had supplied these new conflicts. For we find in the last century issues much broader in scope, and more deepcutting, than the purely political ones of the previous century. Nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, socialism, communism, racism,

all sorts of “isms,” generated such conflicts and brought on the spread of propaganda into non-political areas as well. The whole fabric of every modern social system thus became saturated with propaganda. It was during this period of intensive and widespread propaganda, linked as it now was with issues involving class, race, and international

relations as well as the purely national, that Freud brought to the attention of the general public the role that the subconscious and the unconscious play in human conduct. The impact that this had on the practitioners of propaganda is inestimable. A new dimension was added thereby to propaganda, and propagandists were presented with new opportunities not fully realized indeed down to the present day. They now had at their disposal not only new manipulative tools but an entirely new psychic area to explore and exploit, the irrational depths of the human psyche. The immediate effect was an increased play upon the emotions. Even a cursory examination of pre-Freudian propaganda literature would reveal the great trust the propagandists of the 18th and early 19th century placed in human reason, in common sense—a reflection of the Rational Man postulated by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Post-Freudian propaganda material, on the other hand, shows an accentuated reliance on the irrational well-springs of human motivation, reflecting the acceptance by propagandists of the new, Freudian image of man. World War I, which, like every large war, stirred up the emotions of people to a high pitch, strengthened this trend toward the manipulation of the emotions

considerably by the opportunities it offered.

It is not surprising, there-

fore, that those who first undertook to study propaganda immediately after that war saw it—as Lasswell had, for instance—as mainly an effort

Propaganda

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61

to manipulate symbols in order to arouse emotions, a notion that has been

considerably modified by subsequent study. That the manipulation of these emotions is a part, and an important one, of propagandistic action is, of course, true; that it should be equated with all such action, however, is not. Some modern propagandists have apparently presumed that it should be so equated, for they seem to be inordinately engrossed in devising all sorts of indirect, and devious ways to by-pass the rational faculties of people and hitch on directly to their emotions. In extreme cases, such as that of our so-called “hidden persuaders” (who may be hidden, but technically not persuaders) they may

even by-pass the whole spectrum of consciousness and try to reach and manipulate those sub-levels of the subconscious and the unconscious. The great bulk of propaganda today, however, at least the most effective especially in terms of long-term results, is not conducted on that basis. It is carried on by propagandists, many of whom are really hidden, on a conception of human nature which differs both from the purely speculative one of the 18th century philosophers and that of Freud and the psychoanalysts. A conception, that has been gradually worked out— and is still being worked out, for the picture has not as yet been completed—by that great host of psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists who, applying the tools of science, are attempting to bring to light the riddle that is man.

A conception, further, in which both reason

and feeling, both conscious and unconscious motivation have their place and their function. Modern propaganda, in short, is strongly rooted in the scientific soil of our time, and any future growth is contingent upon the cultivation of that soil. This, of all changes that propaganda has undergone throughout the centuries, may indeed be the most important. For with it, the age of propaganda as an art has come to an end; and that of propaganda as a science has dawned.

CHAPTER

THE

RATIONALE

5

OF MANIPULATION

“It is not calumny or treachery that do the largest sum of mischief in But it is the glistening and soft spoken lie; the amiable the world. fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian; the provident lie of the politician; the zealous lie of the partisan; the merciful lie of the friend, and the care-

less lie of each man he

to himself, that cast black mystery

over humanity —John Ruskin

Propaganda has been shedding rapidly its previous empirical and artistic character in recent years, and has been acquiring one of a scientific nature. But how far has this transformation advanced; and how far really can it go?

Science is systematized, verified knowledge. Is there a place for such knowledge in the work of the propagandist? Science is also a way of obtaining such knowledge, with strict rules as to gathering, correlating, and interpreting data. To what extent does the modern propagandist follow such rules in working out his plans and conducting his activities? Science, finally, both as knowledge and as a way of knowing, postulates a purpose—a philosophy: What is could be known only by strict observance of its rules; and only knowledge thus acquired could serve as the proper instrument of adaptation to the reality revealed. Again, how far does modern propaganda operate on the basis of such a principle? Science is fundamentally informative; propaganda is exclusively manipulative. What limits does this difference in goals place upon the latter’s accepting fully science’s philosophy? And, a final question: What precisely are the fundamental assumptions—the rationale—underlying propagandistic action? Once this is answered, there will be a frame of reference in terms of which any, or all efforts of propagandists, at any time and under all circumstances, could be interpreted and evaluated; and propaganda’s own place in society could be understood. Promotion relying exclusively upon the use of force has been differentiated from that relying upon persuasion. The former lies outside the sphere of our interest. One of the forms of the latter, propaganda, has been isolated and defined. We must now consider, first, the conditions that brought about the increasing reliance on internal rather than

62

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63

external means of social control; and, second, the emergence of the propagandistic variety of promotion among those of a persuasive nature. It is axiomatic that adjustment to the natural world has been and is man’s chief problem; survival, his main preoccupation. The development of whatever potentialities he possesses as a biological organism depends upon the extent to which he has succeeded in meeting this problem. Other species confronted with this same problem have been meeting it by changing themselves organically whenever environmental conditions demanded it. Those that failed to do so perished.

Man, too, fol-

lowed this pattern for some time after his emergence from the lower organic level.

Early forms of man are sufficient evidence that man, too,

evolved. Gradually, however, at a certain stage of his development he began to manipulate his surroundings, unlike other animals, and in so doing, he added a new dimension to life on this planet. He seized upon branches from the trees and stones from the ground and shaped them into tools and weapons. He began to learn about the nature of things, and their relationship to one another and to himself. To the existing inorganic and organic phenomena of world reality, he was thus adding what the anthropologists have called the Superorganic, or cultural. For, the techniques of using the tools he made, and the knowledge he acquired from daily observation of the world around him gradually crystallized into thought patterns, customs, traditions, values—in one word, Culture. His material possessions, his tools, became the tangible manifestations of his thought processes. ; These man-made additions, arising as they did from this constant preoccupation with adjustment to the natural surroundings, gave man a twofold advantage in his dealings with an exacting natural environment. The tools he made and the knowledge he was acquiring enabled him to extract larger amounts of energy locked up in natural resources, making human life more secure, and richer. It also made it possible for the human group to become a more powerful, and more efficient unit in the battle for survival. More powerful because with the unlocking of nature’s energies came also the unlocking of human energies, especially intelligence, which as it unfolded, burst forth into a series of historic inventions and discoveries, into new tools and weapons, new ideas and values, equipping man with a way of adjustment far superior to the passive processes of biological evolution. For man could now turn the tables on the natural world. He could control and mold his natural surroundings

instead of being controlled and molded by them. just that.

And he began doing

Propaganda

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Comes

This flowering of human innate potentiality however, would have been impossible, had not the human group discovered ways of coordinating the activities of its individual members so as to preserve or increase the group’s cohesion and unity, and hence preserve its fighting efficiency in the battle for survival. Culture has supplied the group with such means. Common

ideas, common beliefs, common

traditions,

a common

way of

life are the magnet around which the individual members of a group are attracted and organized in accordance with their individual attributes, whether young or old, male or female, workers or warriors. Their position in the group and their relationship to one another are thus defined, and their responsibilities as well as their privileges, and their activities are dictated accordingly. Culture, then,—this outthrow of the human mind—when

viewed in

terms of man’s relation to nature, is seen as a new way that man alone among living organisms has utilized to solve his problem of adjustment. Viewed in terms of the purely social world (the relation between the group and its individual members), culture becomes an instrument used by the group to mold, guide and control the individual’s growth and behavior as a social being; a means of social control aimed at preserving or enhancing the group’s cohesion and solidarity, and thereby its chances for survival. As a result, the preservation of its culture constitutes one of the primary considerations of every human group. Culture

preservation

is not automatic,

for culture is acquired,

not

transmitted through heredity; it is a social, not a biological heritage. Each generation has to pick it up from the previous generation, and each individual born into a group has to be taught and learn it. A newly

born child is both unsocial and uncultured. It is as naked of mind as of body. It enters life and its group with nothing but the innate capacity to acquire culture and become socialized. Furthermore, culture is not static. Invention follows invention sometimes rapidly, as today, sometimes slowly, as in the past; new tools and ways of doing things are piled up on the existing cultural layer. Gas illumination is added to that of candlepower, and electricity to both, and the old is preserved with the new. New values emerge out of the old; only the latter remain to compete with and challenge the new. The struggle for existence with which we are familiar in the biological field is duplicated in the cultural field, and as

it unfolds, it affects the interaction among individuals within a society by offering them alternative, and sometimes contradictory, answers to proper conduct. The accumulation of cultural alternatives, each competing for acceptance, creates and with time intensifies the task of

The

Rationale

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65

acculturating and socializing the newly arrived individual. The problem of individual adjustment to the group becomes accentuated as the group’s culture becomes more complex and diversified, and its social structure more intricate. With time, it assumes such enormous proportions as to force the initial and perennial struggle with nature to recede to the periphery of human consciousness. Man’s attention becomes preoccupied more and more with purely social questions and problems. These facts—that we are born culturally ignorant and socially plastic, that culture is acquired through learning and not inherited biologically, and that it is dynamic, and by so being tends to give forth diverse and at times contradictory answers as to the meaning of things or the best way of reacting to our surroundings—are the conditions which collectively define and impose upon the individual the problem of adjustment to his group; and upon the group, that of preserving its social cohesion and solidarity. The selection and acquisition by the individual of behavior patterns that will enable him to live as a member of the group causing the least possible disturbance in the group’s network of social relationships constitutes the social problem par excellence in both primitive and advanced human societies. All our social and political philosophies, all educational theories revolve around that central and basic question: How much choice should the individual be permitted in making his selections—in becoming cultivated and socialized? They are all answers to that same question, and it is worth noting that with the single exception of the democratic tradition—a rather recent philosophy—the answers have leaned heavily on the side of the group with little, and at times, no recognition of the individual’s right to make his own choices. The democratic tradition, it should be further noted, recognizing as it does the worth of the individual as an individual, nevertheless grants him no absolute freedom in his pursuits of cultural acquisition; it strictly draws the line at a point where the rights of other individuals, or of society as a whole, may be interfered with. The principle of group guidance, of group responsibility to direct the individual in making these choices has firmly been established and followed in every human society with only variations of degree distinguishing one from another. It will be found lurking behind all the activities of leaders and functionaries acting in the name of their groups in politics, religion, economics, education, or any other field involving this question of the individual’s relation to his group and to society. Justification for

this principle lies in the group’s desire to check the disintegrating forces

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that may arise from excessive use of individual choice and to preserve as high a degree of cohesion among its members as possible. In assuming to limit cultural choice and to direct selection, the group acts in self-defense. Group guidance has survival value both for the group, and the individual who cannot survive except as a member of a group. Throughout history we find human societies devising ways of molding the individual’s character and controlling his behavior from the time of his birth to the end of his days. There may be many differences between the initiation ceremonies of primitive man, and the formal and informal educational procedures of modern man. Fundamentally, however, they have a common objective: adjustment of the individual to the group through the imposition of the existing cultural patterns upon him, and the preservation of the degree of integration the group’s culture has been able to attain. It is in this way that culture is transmitted from generation to generation, that it is moved on, promoted.

Second, there-

fore, in importance to the integration of a group’s culture is its desire to see it continued, taken over by the rising generation. Around this latter interest, man has built a cluster of activities which, though sharing the common objective of promoting culture, nevertheless differ in some respects, and these differences are important. It is of great importance both for the individual and the group whether the particular behavior patterns that the group wishes the individual to follow in his daily conduct are imposed upon him through external pressure—through the use of physical force or the threat of it—or acted upon because the individual has accepted them willingly and follows them because he is convinced that he should do so. In the first instance, continuous application of compulsion would drive the individual inwardly, and would arouse hostile feelings against the group within him leading to discontent, resentment, frustrations, and thoughts of revenge.

These

may become dangerous to the group if the number of individuals so affected becomes increasingly large, for such are the seeds that blossom into revolutionary movements. From the group’s point of view, external pressure is neither economical nor successful in the long run. The maintenance of a sufficient police force to exert the necessary pressure would become an increasingly difficult problem, for such a force would have to be supported economically by the very people who are being kept in line by it. A vicious circle would begin with discontent increasing in direct proportion with the need for greater police measures to check it. The task of the group’s leaders would thus become more and more difficult and with the passing of time they would find themselves out of

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tune with their subjects. They would have to be constantly on guard, as this road too, leads to possible revolutionary action. In addition, a group within which external pressure has been the rule over a long period of time, because of this increasing gap between the rulers and the ruled, would find itself in an extremely vulnerable position in case of an attack from the outside—from other groups. History is replete with accounts of people opening their welcoming arms to the invader. The psychological and social trends mentioned above are reversed in the second instance—when individuals are persuaded to accept the group’s codes of behavior as the proper ways of conduct. In this case, the group is able to maintain its social equilibrium with the least effort and at the minimum cost, and the changes that it undergoes with the passing of time are those that normally occur due to the dynamic nature of culture and the impossibility and perhaps undesirability of transmitting the cultural heritage of one generation to the next in its entirety. Such a group changes through evolution. It is significant that historically the business of cultural promotion has itself undergone certain evolutionary changes. Most important of these changes has been a definite shift from the compulsive to the persuasive type as humanity emerged out of the primitive world into the modern. The sword and gun of the earlier guardian of the public order—the policeman—have been gradually replaced by the nightstick, which in turn has been yielding to the simple, though lustrous badge in the more advanced societies. So close has been the interdependence between this shift from compulsion to persuasion and the march of human progress and the development of higher values that the type of promotion prevailing in any society at the time could be taken as an index in estimating the relative advancement, or backwardness, of that society. The man who first called the Nazis barbarians might have thought he had been indulging in name-calling; but he might also have been impressed by the close similarity of their totalitarian state, with its Gestapo, concentation camps and other such measures, to the earlier tribal systems. If the latter, he certainly had been thinking along sound sociological lines, for totalitarian systems by completely submerging the individual, and therefore blocking the free release of innate, potential energies, are definitely outside the path of human development. They are reactions perhaps to it, but certainly deviations destined to dry out, be smashed from the outside, or overthrown from within by the revolutionary seeds that their rigid, static societies inevitably must produce.

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For what is civilization, and human progress, but the outward mani-

festations of an explosive inner endowment that nature seems to have equipped man with? We may call it Intelligence or Reason, Spirit or Imagination; actually we have not been able as yet to isolate it and define it. But the evidence seems to be overwhelming that the march of humanity can only be understood in terms of the now slow, now rapid, but always upward expression of this “inner potential.” Nor is this onward march unrelated to the particular matter at hand: the shift from compulsive to persuasive promotion. One of the by-products of unfolding civilization is the increasing awareness of individuality, and a high regard and respect for the individual personality. It is very possible that an emerging consciousness of individuality, and the inevitable individualistic, personal values that followed were the forces that gradually brought about that shift—that made the appearance of persuasive promotion in history possible. Consider the following, for instance: Compulsive promotion—the attempt to direct the behavior of the individual toward predetermined channels by the use of physical force —rests upon the following presuppositions: First, that the interests of the society as a whole are paramount, and no other interests, individual, or of special groups, should stand in the

way of their fulfillment. Second, that the leaders of the society are exclusively obligated to the society as a whole, and that the attainment and preservation of an adequate degree of societal cohesion and unity within it is their primary concern and responsibility. Third, that the conduct of the newly-born, or stranger attached to the group—the uncultured and the “miscultured’”—should be directed by compulsion in a manner so as to obviate any possibility of friction with the other members in the group. As a result compulsive promotion appears to operate on the basis of two principles: First, how an individual behaves is far more important than what he feels or thinks about the issue; and, Second, more can be gained by coercion than by any other means of guidance. It should be perfectly obvious why a theory of compulsive promotion is utterly devoid of any conception of the individual as a person. The individual is merely accepted as so much ore, to be shaped and molded

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into a cog, and fitted adequately, if not perfectly, into the social machinery of the society. It should be further clear why the shift that we have been talking about could not have taken place unless, and until some radical departure in social thinking occurred to upset some of the assumptions justifying the exclusive use of force as an instrument of social control and group guidance. The rise of the consciousness of individuality was such a departure. A careful consideration of the theoretical framework of persuasive promotion reveals the interconnection between the two. For instance, persuasive promotion—the attempt to direct the mind and behavior of the individual toward predetermined channels by means other than the use of physical force—still operates under the principle of group guidance. But the reliance on the use of mental rather than physical means introduces some new principles, and also discards, or changes some of the old. Volition supersedes compulsion as a directive factor of conduct. What compulsive promotion negates—the individual mind—persuasive promotion accepts, and undertakes to influence it. Internal direction is preferable to external pressure. Perhaps as a result, at any rate closely related to the above, is the

appearance of a sense of responsibility, an obligation on the part of leaders to the individual as well as to the society at large. Individual interests gradually acquire an importance of their own and must be considered in the process of socialization. This incidentally gives rise to the problem of reconciling individual interest to that of society as a whole, of drawing lines of demarcation between the two; a problem more vital to the democratic society, which has raised individual interest to the highest degree, than to any other type of society. Again, in this new situation, a conception of individuality gradually begins to emerge, with such individual attributes as appetite, feeling and thinking receiving more and more attention. In general, the following principles may be assumed to underlie persuasive promotion: First, that there is reality external to the human mind to which all human effort must sooner or later be directed if the species is to survive. The nature of that reality, whether in its physical, social, or spiritual aspects; or the relative correctness of the assumption about it that various schools of thought—theocratic, zoocentric, or anthropocentric—have given us historically is of no relevance at this point. What is pertinent is that the type of promoter we are considering here does assume the

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existence of such a reality and in his persuasive efforts he is guided by these assumptions, which to him constitute the incontestable truth. Second, that the survival of either the individual or the group is wholly dependent upon an accurate comprehension of this reality, the chances increasing in direct proportion to an accurate approximation of it, and What is of paramount significance here is diminishing contrariwise. that these promoters provide a reference point (their conception of reality), a criterion to estimate the validity of any apperception of part of that reality; of truth, in short. What happens to correspond with what they believe to be real is true. Here it may be repeated, that whether the promoters themselves have conceived this reality accurately or not is immaterial.

If not, “natural” error would tend to character-

ize the notions that they are engaged in promoting, and as we have seen such error tends to be eliminated as the perception of the real tends to become more and more accurate. What is really of great importance is the high value that this type of promotion places upon correct perception— truth—since it links it solidly with the basic problem of survival. There is definitely no room at this stage of promotional activity for either the tolerance of “deliberate” error, or the idea that it may be utilized with profit. Third,

that human

conduct—the

responses

of individuals

to their

surroundings—is to a very large extent controlled by certain individual capabilities such as appetite, feeling, and thinking, only the potentialities of which are determined biologically; their development and functioning resting in the hands of those within the society who control the process of socialization. The individual seen as a complex, reacting mechanism, becomes the target of this promotion. Inevitably, a conception of this responding individual evolves, which in turn determines the methods and techniques promoters must devise to reach him. Fourth, that biologically normal human beings would inevitably react in accordance with the facts of a situation, or what they take to be the facts. Human conduct is by nature sane, or to use a much abused term, rational. What is observed as irrational behavior is therefore so-

cially induced. It is the direct result and reflection of error, “natural” or “deliberate,” transmitted to them through promotional channels. It does not in the least violate this principle; in fact, it reflects it, for to the respondent the error is not known as “error,” but as “truth.” Fifth, that human

behavior is therefore understandable

in terms of

the controlling factors that direct it; it is predictable; and it is controllable.

“Diogenes —a

and the Great Washington Louisville Courier-Journal

71

Snow

cartoon.

Job”

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Sixth, and finally, persuasive promotion rejects the principle of comIn pulsion, that more is gained by coercion than by any other means. enlightenby gained is More e: counter-principl a its stead, it sets up ment—the knowledge of truth—than by coercion. It is an expression of this principle that in persuasive promotion neither the predetermined channels into which behavior is directed, nor the ultimate goals to be reached are hidden; also, that in societies where such promotion is on the increase, reliance upon the use of force tends to diminish correspondingly. We may look at how these principles worked themselves out in the structure of human society; how certain institutional structures emerged, special functionaries appeared, and various promotional activities were developed; all operating within the theoretical framework just outlined, and guided by its principles. It is clear that in persuasion the promoter dispenses with the use of weapons and other physical implements of compulsion. He concentrates instead on the tools that reach the mind—ideas, symbols, values, information, notions of all sorts. Nature, the Unknown, and social relations are described, explained, evaluated, and the individual’s con-

duct is directed into channels logically dictated by the assumptions made of the nature of social, natural, and supernatural phenomena. Originally—in the early stages of human society—such guidance appears as one of the functions that groups such as the family, the clan, or the tribe undertake to perform. Those who undertake to perform this function are not specialists. The father or uncle, the clan or tribal chieftains may engage in it, in addition to their other duties. Nor is there any special social structure—institution—vested with the specific responsibility to train and mold the individual, and in general keep conduct on the right side, and the individual in line. The function itself is not clearly and independently conceived; it is not detached from the overall process of socialization, which may, and usually does, include resort to physical force if and when persuasion may appear to fail. But take a rapid glance over the past. As a result of an expanding human society and the division of labor that accompanies such a development, we see institutions emerging specifically designated to carry on this promotion as agents of society, religious and secular schools, the press in all its forms, governmental information bureaus, publicity agents of all sorts—all carriers of the old, and some discoverers of the new. Through them, the culture of the society flows, and either through imitation or suggestion, formal or informal instruction, the knowledge,

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the traditions, the whole way of life of the group are transmitted to young and old, from one generation to the next. Gradually the persons specializing in working within those institutions are given names identifying them as the specialists that they are, preachers, teachers, reporters, advertisers; as are the specific activities they engage in, indoctrination, education, information, advertising.

The point that must be emphasized is this: the work of these institutions and specialists is necessary for the survival and development of the social system; it becomes more so as the complexity of the system increases and the pulls and strains on its cohesion mount as it evolves. This work is also legitimate, insofar as such work aims at the attainment of goals, both individual and social, dictated by a reality as conceived and expressed in the way of life of the society. Then, the principle of “adjustment through enlightenment” permeates and guides all such activities. Strictly speaking such promotion is not propagandistic. Those responsible for the promulgation of the society’s ideology accept that ideology as true. That very acceptance precludes the use of propaganda since the promulgators themselves are dedicated men who have seen the “light” and wish the rest of the people to share it with them. The thought of passing it on in any but its pure form, and through any but honest and legitimate means, would indeed be abhorrent to them—

perhaps even unthinkable. Were a society established upon an ideology so true to the real nature of things that it could go on undisturbed by challenges either from within or without its boundaries—such as the ideal society that both Polybius and Lambert had in mind—its promotional activities would continue to remain indefinitely in the state just described, and propaganda would not come into being as it would indeed be unnecessary. The fact, is however, that no society has ever been so favored; and that no society in the path of civilization has ever been immune to criticism from within or impervious to challenges from without. Instead, new conceptions of the human, the natural, or the supernatural domains have always arisen to contend with the way of life of all historical societies. The challenge to a society’s ideology emanating from such new philosophies does not in itself introduce, though ultimately it may induce, the deviation from these legitimate promotional activities that may bring on propagandistic promotion. At the initial stage of the challenge, when these new thought systems are offered merely as alternatives to the philosophy supporting the society, their devotees are urging the acceptance of the new real truth with the same ardor and sincerity—purely on in-

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tellectual grounds—as those of the old truth in their attempt to preserve and promote theirs. So long as the challenge remains in this initial intellectual stage, and the new philosophy is subject to free discussion and criticism, the need to attack it, or support it, on any but a rational basis does not arise.

Nor does it pose a serious threat to the established order,

as Jefferson saw long ago when in his first inaugural address he made this great, confident statement: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” It so happens and it has happened often in history, that some of these new philosophies may become the focal points around which individuals with common political, economic, or other interests and aspirations, may rally and enter into a struggle for power with other groups similarly organized, or the existing social system itself. The challenge then ceases to be merely intelectual, as the groups now strive for positions of power within the system. Yet, it would be advantageous to the contending groups if the challenge appeared merely intellectual; and to make it appear so, the newly discovered truth, and the old are thrown into the conflict. But the contest between new and old truths is no longer one of survival of the better truth on strictly intellectual, and rational grounds. The philosophy is now being used to support morally as well as intellectually the conflicting claims of the contestants. As a result, truth itself now becomes transform-

ed. It is no longer something to be sought after in all sincerity in order to obtain a better image of reality; it is an instrument to be used to cloak and disguise the real objectives and motives of the interested group. This in turn effects a change in its character; for it now acquires an elasticity far beyond that allowed by the facts it is intended to portray, or by the rules of reason.

Truth, indeed, is the first casualty not only in war but

in any conflict of serious dimensions. It is under such conditions that a departure from the old promotional activities takes place. For truth is no longer spread in order to inform. In fact, the principle itself of “adjustment through enlightenment” is now inapplicable. The need now is not to inform people, but to manipulate them. To meet that need a new principle arises: successful manipulation must be achieved through illusion. To create that illusion, new methods and new procedures are devised, and a new type of promotion—propagandistic—appears. It is in this fashion that propaganda, with its roots still in persuasive promotion, emerges out of conflict as a

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promotional activity developing a distinct character of its own, and a rationale peculiar to itself. For example: In common with all persuasive promotion, propaganda rejects the principle underlying compulsive promotion (more can be gained by coercion than by any other means) and operates on the one supporting persuasion: the cultivation of volition is much more profitable than reliance on compulsion. However, though the internal controls of human conduct are valued as more reliable than the external pressures, propaganda rejects the axiom that the cultivation of volition should be effected in accordance with the reality-principle (enlightenment). The propagandist operates under the principle that “more can be gained by illusion than by either enlightenment or coercion.” Closely connected with the above is the relation of propaganda to the fact of the innate rationality of the human mind. In common with the other forms of persuasion, propaganda recognizes its validity. Unlike the others, which aim at the development of this quality of man’s mind, propaganda attempts to check and frustrate it. In addition, an analysis of the propagandist’s work reveals the following implications: The pursuit of special interest is preferable to that of society’s as a whole or the general individual’s within that society. Since society has a prior claim upon the individual’s allegiance ae the special interest may not happen to coincide with the general interest all effort should be directed at making the special interest appear identical to that of society’s. The relation of the action sought for by the propagandist to the ultimate goals he seeks should not be revealed to those under manipulation. The reality of any situation that may require public response should be so described as to induce only the response that the propagandist desires. Since psychological reality—what people think and feel in general— is far more accessible to propagandistic treatment than social reality (the society’s existing structure) the propagandist must in general give preference to the manipulation of that reality. The value of a “truth” is not to be measured in terms of its relative correspondence to the facts of a situation, but by the degree of its effectiveness in bringing about a desired response. A play upon the impulses and emotions of people is one of the ways of overcoming the innate rationality of man.

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The effectiveness of a propaganda campaign is measured in terms of the degree of control over the behavior of a public the propagandist has succeeded in mastering; and that such effectiveness is invariably in inverse proportion to the obviousness of his work. The propagandist’s exclusive responsibility lies with the special interest he is serving; and that any undesirable, long-term by-products of his work are of no concern to him. The planning and execution of a propaganda campaign must be pursued on a strictly objective, scientific basis with the propagandist maintaining complete emotional aloofness in the operation. Finally, that a thorough study and understanding of the psychological and sociological peculiarities of the “target” group to be manipulated must precede every propaganda effort, for the success of the operation depends upon the degree to which it is scientific. The reason why propagandists do what they do and the significance of what they do to the society at large are both locked up in the principles just stated. In conclusion,

it may be restated that no idea, no truth, no whole

system of thought, no philosophy, no matter how zealously and how intensively they may be advanced by their believers, have any propaganda value or significance so long as they are not attached to organized interests seeking power, prestige, or wealth in competition with others.

They do acquire such value, for the reasons given previously, the moment they become so attached. Were it otherwise, all philosophers, all intellectuals, in fact anyone expressing publicly a view, or even a thought in any manner, would automatically be considered propagandists, and their action, propaganda.

Which, of course, is not the case.

Take, for example, the philosophy of racism which offers race as the key to human history. It has had long roots in history though it was not expounded at length until Gobineau and Chamberlain wrote their massive works in the last century. These men were social thinkers, social philosophers convinced that they had solved the riddle of man’s advance and anxious to pass their discovery on to others. Racism thus entered the competition in the intellectual world with other such “key” philosophies as geographic determinism and economic determinism and gradually found its niche in the galaxy of “philosophies of history.” Until the Nazis came, the advocacy of racism as an interpretation of history was not propaganda; it required no propagandistic means for its support. With the Nazis racism became the core of their ideology. It fitted beautifully into their plans both during their revolutionary stage,

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and later. Attached thus to the political ideology of the Nazis, racism was quickly turned into a propaganda force supporting, and justifying Nazi policy and practice. Had it not been so attached, it would have remained—as it is again becoming—merely a system of thought, harmless in the long run, so long as it had to compete with other such systems. Communism as a philosophy presents a striking parallel, though its orbit has not yet been completed. Not all expression of thought or opinion is, therefore, of a propagandistic nature—any more than all promotion is so.

CHAPTER

FACETS OF MODERN

6

PROPAGANDA

“To arouse outbursts of fury; to get masses of men on the march; to organize hatred and suspicion—all with ice-cold calculation—that is the task of the propagandist.”—-Goebbels.

Whether propaganda is practiced as an art or a science the principles guiding it will still stand. The propagandist will still work for a special interest; he will still try to make people believe he is somebody else; he will still have to present a false picture of reality to those he wishes to manipulate; he will still be unconcerned as to the effects upon people either in the near or remote future, other than the ones he is seeking;

and, if he is to be successful in his enterprise, he will still have to guard himself against accepting for reality the illusion that he is creating for others. Where then does the difference lie? Chiefly in the manner in which the propagandist goes about trying to accomplish these things. As an artist, he relies upon intuition, empirical knowledge, and the rule of thumb. In such a case he finds it difficult to divorce himself from his task—to attain a high degree of objectivity. His intuition has a way of injecting his personal values, and his likes and dislikes, into his propaganda; or forcing him to express what he feels like saying rather than what people should be made to hear. This is a troublesome enough condition in a simple society; it is a dangerous one in a complex society where different groups must be told different things at the same time, and for the same purpose. Furthermore, being chiefly of an individualistic character, empirical propaganda cannot guarantee a long, continuous control over the people the propagandist has succeeded in bringing under his influence. Such control is usually relinquished with the passing of the individual propagandist from the scene. Propaganda as an art, therefore, has serious spatial and temporal limitations. Such shortcomings were a factor in the development of propaganda along scientific lines; an event so pronounced during our century. But there were other forces at work: the rise of science, and the gradual acceptance of the scientific attitude and methods as a way of knowing; the industrial revolution that spawned not only the class structure of

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today, but also imperialism, colonialism, and all the other “isms.” Out of all these sprang the conflicts that bedevil us today, conflicts of a much greater scope both spatially and temporally, and of a greater intensity, than any that confronted mankind in the past. It is not difficult to visualize how impotent, how useless a weapon propaganda would be under these new conditions, if it too did not change, and change in the direction that the western world was going. The practice of propaganda could not long remain at a pre-scientific stage, the artistic stage, while the areas which generated these modern conflicts, the economic, the political, and others, were being reconstructed more and more along scientific lines. Sooner or later propaganda too would have to be pulled into the orbit of science’s rising star. And this is precisely what happened. What have been some of the results? It was pointed out that the propagandist who relies on his intuitive hunches and empirical knowledge runs the risk of permitting his personal feelings to intrude into his calculations and his work, and that such an intrusion of subjectivity is fraught with danger. Ina recent book, for example, entitled Zero,’ written by two Japanese authors one of whom was the designer of the Japanese plane by that name, it was indicated that the Japanese High Command failed to interest itself in the improvement of the plane as the war progressed because they were victimized by their own propaganda which kept hammering at American decadence and the superiority of the Japanese fighting spirit. This is a clear illustration of the propagandist mistaking the illusion he has created for reality. The least that could happen, as a matter of fact, to a propagandist operating within a society that is becoming increasingly complex, with the resulting conflicts getting wider and deeper and of longer duration, is to find his efforts becoming increasingly ineffective. Propagandists gradually came to the realization that the old inspirational, hit-or-miss tricks were losing their effectivenes; that the new conditions demanded new techniques altogether. To devise these new

techniques they consulted psychologists and other social scientists who could supply them with the necessary knowledge. Inevitably, the spirit of objectivity that characterizes the work of the scientists was passed on to them and slowly permeated their work as well. The fact is, no propagandist today is worth his salt unless he is capable of operating in that spirit. Science in general has been exerting a strong push toward a more scientific propaganda. Take the modern propagandist’s scope—his area

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of operations. The great development in the means of transportation and the facility with which printed matter may be distributed today; the space—and

time—eliminating media of communication,

both oral

and visual, have greatly expanded the distances within which a propagandist may be read, heard, or seen.

These have created problems for

him that were practically non-existent before, such as choosing the proper medium of communication, the appropriate time, the potential target. The rapidity of the spoken word over the air, for instance, will have to be weighed against its impermanence; the morning hour against the evening hour, or Sunday against a week-day; and one group as against another. It is obvious that here again rules of thumb and occasional flashes of inspiration would hardly be adequate. How meticulous, and complex a propaganda operation is today may be illustrated by a case such as this: A youngster drops a penny into a slot machine for a piece of candy. On the wrapper he reads of the beauties of Russia, and perhaps of the happiness of peace. He arrives home to find his mother adding her name to a peace petition. On the mantelpiece he notices a Christmas card with Picasso’s Dove of Peace on it. His sister had put it there; it was sent to her by one of her boy friends. His father is listening to the radio, and the mournful tune about a G. I. abroad whose girl had jilted him pours forth. He picks up the daily paper which lies on the couch, and if he is interested in anything but the sports page, he notices an announcement of a coming “cultural” meeting to discuss the pleasures of peace and the horrors of war. Now little Johnny decides to visit his playmate, Billy, across the street. He finds him, scissors in hands, clipping a column from his favorite paper. What is Billy doing that for? Why, he wants to send it to his brother in South Vietnam. It is about another G. I. in South Vienam; it says so in the headline.

The brother should be interested.

Does Billy know what the article is about? Of course; he had read it through, and he thinks it is awfully funny, as did the columnist who printed it. For it was really a letter that a “friend” of this G. I. had supposedly written telling him what a wonderful time his wife was having during his absence. Billy’s brother, too, is married, so he should be amused at the humor.

Besides, Billy wants to send something like that

to his brother since he had just received some funny leaflets, with pictures, that his brother said he had picked up. Billy showed Johnny one of those leaflets. It had the picture of a beautiful American girl on one side, and the message about the joys of peace on the other.

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This is a hypothetical case, of course; though most of the propaganda items that were mentioned are not. Taken separately, each of those items may be viewed as a harmless, perhaps even a funny, product of someone’s highly fertile imagination. Collectively, however, they do not fail to reveal the fact that some organized, well-informed intelligence is behind both their production and distribution. They are the outpourings of a cold, well-reasoned, and carefully planned propaganda offensive intended to give American public opinion a push in a definite direction. Well-authenticated, scrupulously prepared, sometimes even pre-tested and impersonally conceived, such is the nature of contemporary propaganda output; and its distribution reflects the same meticulous control, varying in intensity and volume from time to time and from target to target. Modern propaganda has become a scientifically coordinated activity aimed at large scale deception, and through it, the control of masses. It swallows up not only the individual citizen as an individual, but also the propagandist himself as such. The demand for the highest degree of objectivity simply obliterates him. It is significant that among the modern totalitarians, the Russians never produced a Goebbels, be-

fore, during, or after the last war. In conducting their propaganda, they seem to have been operating on the principle of “collective leadership” all along.

It is questionable, as a matter of fact, whether Goebbels

himself was ever much more than a was conducted by the great number ticulously and diligently—and from of course—to give Nazi propaganda it possessed. Writing on the use of rumors by

symbol of Nazi propaganda which of experts who labored daily metheir point of view, patriotically, the cohesion and coordination that

the Nazi propagandists during the

last war, Allport and Postman make the following observation:

“It is unlikely that any Axis ‘rumor factory’ existed in this country. However,

the ‘line’ of the Axis

shortwave

radio

and

the nature

of

current rumors corresponded closely. Dark hints of the President’s sanity were noised at home at about the time Goebbels was airing the same suspicion on the air. It is not clear whether such tales originated in Berlin and were picked up and spread in this country by Axis sympathizers, or whether Berlin was notified of the prevailing complaints and distrust in this country and proceeded to exploit the same themes. The fact remains, however, that America’s wartime rumors often seemed

to reflect the current line of Axis propaganda.” * Such close correspondence between the nature of the rumors spread at the time and the current line of Axis propaganda could only be

Propaganda

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achieved through scientifically controlled propaganda. Even Goebbels, in ‘airing his suspicions” was only voicing what must have taken many men much time and effort to prepare. It is significant, too, that Allport and Postman, being the guarded scientists that they are, show reluctance to point definitely at the source of these rumors; which is a tribute not only to the spirit of their inquiry, but also to the careful planning and execution of the Axis propagandists. The gradual acceptance of the spirit of objectivity and the expansion of the propagandist’s field of operations were accompanied by a high degree of specialization of function, and a corresponding bureaucratic organization.

There is black as well as white propaganda today. As activities, these differ one from the other as much as their color designation implies. Black propaganda is completely hidden; white propaganda is wide open. When Goebbels spoke over the radio, he was engaging in white propaganda; but who spread those rumors and jokes, incidentally, about the President and others of our leaders during the war here? Similarly, the Axis knew when the voice of American white propaganda was speaking—all they had to do was listen to OWI; but could they know when the black counterpart (OSS) was eating into their vitals like a cancer? ’ The distinction between these two types of propaganda is, incidentally, very simple. The white propagandist addresses his opponent as You— You do this, or You do that. The black propagandist plays a different role.

He puts on a mask, that of the opponent’s friend, or, better still,

that of the opponent himself, and speaks as We this, and We that. The damage that such an approach could do is, indeed, incalculable. Discontent, suspicion, fear, demoralization in general could be induced with great ease within an enemy’s camp in that way. In fact, its dynamic potentiality for mischief is only exceeded perhaps by the certainty of failure in the event of discovery. No propaganda is likely to boomerang as surely, and as fast, as this brand.

It is to guard against such a possibility—to shield the black propagandist’s identity at all costs—as well as to equip him with the knowledge and tools that his work demands that new techniques had to be developed; techniques quite different from those called for in the waging of white propaganda. And the job was turned over to the scientists. For black more than white propaganda requires a scientific foundation to be effective. White has some tolerance for subjectivity. The white propagandist may let some of his personal feelings slip into his work with little impairment to his effectiveness. Black has none. The

Facets

of Modern

Propaganda

83

black propagandist must maintain almost an absolute degree of objectivity to be effective. Black propaganda is not something new. Only to the extent that it has been placed on a scientific basis does it belong to our century. For it, too, like white propaganda, has enjoyed a pre-scientific stage—an empirical, artistic stage. In his book Ideas and Men, Crane Brinton points out: “There is another phase of the interrelation of cultures that comes out at its best in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. This is the use of bits of information—actually more often misinformation—about one culture to further a policy you are pushing in your own culture. In the eighteenth century, the philosophes loved to invent wise Persians, Chinese, Hindus, Hurons, and South Sea Islanders who, coming in contact with European ways, brought to the criticism of Europe the wisdom

of their own points of view. The trouble is that all these yellow, black, brown, and red men, bringing to bear on European problems their own supposedly native wisdom, turned out to be themselves European Philosophes, with exactly the same ideas about right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, reason and superstition, nature and convention the other enlightened had. These non-Europeans are no more than fictions, straw men,

sticks with which

to beat something

Western,

and no proof at

all that we Westerners have really learned at high ethical and metaphysical levels from other peoples. With nineteenth-century improvement in sciences like geography and anthropology, this rather innocent game could not go on in quite the same way. Too much was known about the primitive peoples.” * Here is an indirectness that characterizes black propaganda; an indirectness that has not gone quite the full circle as yet—the philosophes do not assume the identity of their opponents—but destined to increase and arrive at that point with time. Brinton’s comment that this “game could not go on in quite the same way” with the developments in geography and anthropology points the finger to one of the forces that brought about a great increase in indirectness. Another example from the same century, and this one much closer to our conception of black propaganda, is to be found in Munson’s Twelve

Decisive

Battles of the Mind.

Back

in 1780

Thomas

Paine

conceived of a plan “for planting American propaganda inside England itself.” Munson quotes Paine as proposing: “. , to take a passage for Europe, and endeavour to go privately to England . . . as the press in that country is free and open, coud a

Propaganda

84.

Comes

of Age

a person possessed of a knowledge of America, and capable of fixing it in the minds of the people of England, go suddenly from this country to that, and keep himself concealed, he might, were he to manage his knowledge rightly, produce a more general disposition for peace than by any method I can suppose. . . . The manner in which I would bring such a publication out would be under the cover of an Englishman who had made the tour of America incog. This will afford me all the foundation I wish for and enable me to place matters before them in a light in which they have never yet viewed them. . . .”* Paine’s plan, observes Munson,

“seemed

a madcap

one to General

Nathanael Greene and Benjamin Franklin who dissuaded Paine from attempting it, but it is quite reasonable beside the audacious exploits of propagandists in the last twenty-five years.” Now, this split into black and white propaganda is only one of the results of the division of labor that has been going on recently within the field. There have been others. A clear distinction is being made today between strategic and tactical propaganda. Large scale propaganda operations which also tend to have a long time span cannot be effectively pursued unless the difference between the immediate and the ultimate objectives is clearly understood. Strategic propaganda is concerned chiefly with the latter. It is wrapped up around the ultimate goals: victory over the enemy in war, and destruction of the political machine that gives him the power to wage it; and sometimes even beyond that, in view of the kaleidoscope of international relations and the possibility of future realignments among nations. Our propaganda in the last war, for example, was geared toward the complete annihilation of Nazi power in Germany; but not toward the elimination of the title of the Emperor in the case of the Japanese. Tactical propaganda, on the other hand, is limited both in scope and time. It exploits a situation in a local sector, and as such, it may or it may not seem to be in tune with the claims of the strategic propaganda. It must, however, in general conform to the ultimate objectives.

There is one intriguing aspect to tactical propaganda that deserves special mention. Tactical requirements may at times compel the propagandist to tell the pure, unadulterated truth so that the big lie may be swallowed later; or to induce a minor defeat, so that a major victory

may follow. The former, incidentally, is likely to mislead some people into believing that propaganda does not always involve distortion. It would be more

accurate, and safer in fact, to assume

that especially

Faceis

of Modern

Propaganda

85

when straightforward, propaganda is likely to be more effective and more dangerous; for it is then that the illusion sought by the propagandist takes in much greater territory than that covered by the truths that he knowingly circulates. One of the best examples of this practice is given in an article by Brewster Morgan * in which the author describes the operation of an American radio station disguised as German during the advance of our troops in Germany. For days nothing but the most accurate and truthful information was given to the Germans—to establish the station’s credibility, of course. But then came the right moment when American divisions had deployed for a concerted attack. The information that was transmitted over the radio at that time about the position of the American forces was anything but accurate, and the deception achieved was worth all the displeasure of having to give the enemy truthful information up till then.

It can indeed be established as a maxim that even when he tells the truth, the propagandist lies! Paradoxical as this statement may appear on the surface, it is nevertheless consistent with the propagandist’s objective. He is not interested at all in truth as truth; his chief concern is to create illusion. If he can create it by utilizing truth, he will utilize truth. Strategic and tactical propaganda again require different training, different devices, different procedures in general, all reflecting the difference of major (strategic) as against minor (tactical) problems and goals. A still further specialization that characterizes the development of modern propaganda is that indicated by the terms preparational and operational. Again different procedures and different techniques are involved. The preparational propagandist is mainly concerned with producing a frame of mind within the group he is working on. He implants the right “truths,” and cultivates the “proper” attitudes that would ultimately eventuate in the action he wants. But that action is not his immediate concern. He usually has ample time to prepare long before a crisis arises. The assiduous inculcation of the attitudes of blind obedience to the Fuehrer and German racial superiority in the German schools as soon as they were turned into Nazi propaganda centers exemplifies this type. The operational propagandist, on the other hand, is chiefly concerned with action. The crisis is at hand; something has to be done, and done

quickly.

Lacking the time to prepare—or

finding it unnecessary

to

86

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

prepare, if his preparational confrere had done an adequate job—this He propagandist does not waste any time with intellectual subtleties. appeals, agitates, demands action. He is the real “trouble-maker,” exploiting the centers of disaffection and friction in foreign countries, intensifying racial, religious, political, and economic conflicts. The Nazis had a picturesque word for this type: the “stoerungskerne”—the kernels of disturbance. Less poetic, the Russians call him simply the “agitator” and use him not only in foreign lands but within the Communist world as well to stir up all sorts of “spontaneous” action at the command of the Kremlin. OSS spawned our own brand during the last war: the MO agent, a man or a woman specializing in morale operations; that is, in undermining the enemy’s morale. These have been some of the major changes that have come about in the waging of modern propaganda, changes that have been the result of a division of labor and specialization of function necessitated by the increasing dependence of propaganda activity upon scientific knowledge. The influence of an advancing science, however, has not been limited

to the strictly propagandistic effort—the positive attempts to mold and control the behavior of people. It has permeated, and is transforming some of the supporting, peripheral activities without which an effective propaganda may be impossible. Take the trouble-makers, for instance. They would be unable to exploit those centers of disturbance and possible friction in an opponent’s camp were they not well-informed as to where to find them. Finding them, and evaluating them in terms of their strength or weakness, or the possibility of exploitation in general, is quite a different task from taking advantage of them, requiring a different sort of training and preparation altogether. The trouble-maker, in short, is ineffective without a trouble-seeker. In the past, kings and emperors, and other rulers in general used to send their men to mingle with the crowds in public places and listen to their talk. This was a simple kind of spying which nevertheless enabled the ruler to get the tenor of his people’s thinking. That procedure, of course, is hopelessly inadequate under modern conditions. The modern complex world, and scientifically waged propaganda demand not only more information, but also more reliable information. It was to meet this demand that the old-style trouble-seeker, or spy, was superseded

by a staff of specialists familiar with the group—geographic, political, or economic—that the propagandist may be interested in manipulating. Whether in war or peace today every large-scale propaganda operation

Facets

of Modern

Propaganda

87

finds the propagandists literally surrounded by “intelligence” desks staffed with such experts whose sole function is to feed the propagandists with the most accurate and latest information available on the target group under consideration. But the modern propagandist needs more than reliable information about a group in order to perform his task well; he must at all times have some idea how successful, or unsuccessful, his efforts are. This he can only get through periodic observations and studies of the behavior within the group. This is a most difficult task in war time when the enemy exercises almost complete control over all the channels of communication, making access to his population extremely problematical; it is not so difficult, on the other hand, if the target group happens to be located within the propagandist’s own society. In the latter case, direct methods, such as poll taking, surveys, interviews can be easily utilized to obtain the necessary information. In the former, however, only indirect methods may be resorted to, such as reading the enemy’s publications easily obtainable in neutral countries, interviewing travelers, interrogating prisoners, and other such procedures. In either case, only individuals adequately trained in these techniques could perform such a job successfully. Closely allied to this last task, but still quite different and requiring talents and training peculiar to itself, is the additional, and very necessary, task of trying to divine what the opposing propagandist is up to; what the motives, aims, and prospects of his propaganda are. This can only be accomplished by a continuous analysis of his propaganda, which, if capably pursued, will not fail to reveal his goals, as well as his strength or weakness. It is not an easy task and certainly not one for the amateur. Since no propaganda operation today could hope to succeed without taking into account what counter-action may be expected from the opponent’s quarters, or what previous action by the opponent may have to be taken into consideration, another kind of specialist has arisen —the propaganda analyst.’ An interesting question in connection with the propaganda analyst’s work is: How successful can your analysis of the opponent’s propaganda be, if he too is as scientific in his efforts as you are? Actually, the more scientific he is, the easier it will be to detect and uncover his plans; and not only his plans but also those of the policy makers behind him. Through the analysis, the controlling pattern of the operation would

emerge, and separate actions on his part which on the surface may appear entirely unrelated to each other or to any overall objective would

8&8

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

become meaningful when seen in terms of that pattern. A haphazard propaganda campaign with little coordination between its various operations is the great bugaboo of the propaganda analyst. The previous discussion has given only an intimation of the intricacy of modern propaganda. How its various facets are interrelated may be illustrated by the following example which, too, only in part reveals the extent of its complexity. Here is a simple leaflet from the battlefront. Let us assume it was produced at the front lines by a psychological warfare combat team. The message on it, in this particular case, relating to a wish for peace reinforced by the picture of the beautiful girl on the reverse side, was probably the inspiration of some one member of the team. But it had to be approved by the team, and by the military commander of the area, before it was put into leaflet form and fired at the enemy. What did this approval involve? First, some knowledge of the general propaganda theme general headquarters was playing up at the time. This was transmitted to the sector through regular directives indicating the general direction overall propaganda was following. Unless there were good tactical reasons, this message should not run counter to any of these major themes. Assuming this particular problem was thoroughly thrashed out and settled, what else was necessary? All the knowledge about the nature, strength, morale and every aspect of the target for whom this leaflet was intended. Here, information reaching the team’s intelligence officer from a monitoring unit, from officers interrogating prisoners, from secret agents, in

short, from every possible source, would have to be consulted. If the message did not run counter to either strategic or tactical requirements, the pamphlet could then be produced. The layout artist, the writer, and the printer from the mobile unit are called in and given instructions to proceed with the production. But that is not all. Now comes another and final step for which the other two may be said to have been preliminary. How can this leaflet be placed into the hands of those for whom it was intended? It could be dropped over the lines. But how? Will you use planes, or artillery? Knowledge of local conditions again will determine your choice. If you chose planes, a regular sequence of complicated consultations with air corps officers will follow through the team’s air corps liaison officer; if artillery, a similar procedure through the artillery liaison officer. It would be still more complicated if this leaflet were to be black. Both its produc-

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143

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Propaganda

Comes

of Age

could either extol the virtues of his side and magnify the vices of his opponents, or resort to all the devices of descriptive and semantic distortion hoping to induce, indirectly, those very same feelings about himself or his opponent. The latter approach reveals fully the propagandist’s purpose in manipulating the intellectual processes. Through either method he may succeed in diverting the flow of feeling in the direction that might eventually lead to the action he desires. The ideal situation for the propagandist would be one in which the individual has thoroughly accepted the worldview of the propagandist, a condition that can only prevail in—in fact, is the goal of—the totalitarian state. In such a society the constant drilling into the mind of an individual that the truth about state, race, or the proletariat is the only real and absolute “truth” may convince him of this fact after some time, especially since the propagandist’s argument is reinforced by the censor, the secret police, and the state’s law. Under such conditions, with his intellectual work more or less com-

pleted, with the individual viewing the world through the mythological prisms of state, race, or class and most secure in his conviction that that

is the real world and not an illusion, the propagandist could devote his main attention to evoking, and in general manipulating feelings according to his needs, and plans. He could think of his job—as Goebbels did—as being primarily intended “to arouse outbursts of fury: to get masses of men on the march; to organize hatred and suspicion—all with ice-cold calculation.” * He can concentrate on the timely exploitation of all the irrational forces, for they are now at his disposal since he has succeeded in taking into his hands the controls over the individual’s thinking processes. There is one risk that the propagandist runs in such a heaven, and it is a serious one: he may himself fall victim to his own machinations. He may, if he is not wary, come to believe as real what he has succeeded in creating. Hitler’s conception of the common man may, for all we know, have been a case of such self-intoxication.

‘The

people,” said he, “in an overwhelming majority, are so feminine in their nature and attitude that their activities and thoughts are motivated less by sober consideration than by feeling and sentiment.” * The power for “sober consideration” was precisely the mental quality his Nazi propagandists set out to destroy or suppress from the beginning of their movement. A somewhat reverse situation exists in the democratic society. Here the propagandist has no censor or secret police to aid him; instead, he finds himself in competition with counter-propagandists and all those

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bauchery are portrayed as characteristic of synagogue leaders.

145

146

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

who try in an honest way to inform the individual, such as educators, scientists, and reporters.

He is forced to do battle in the field of reason,

but at tremendous odds as he is met and checked by these competitors at every turn. Finding himself in such a prolonged and perhaps fruitless struggle with his opponents, he may prudently decide to shift the scene of his activities from the area of reason to that of emotion. This may be to his advantage, for due to the interdependence and mutual interaction between thinking and feeling he may succeed through a concentrated barrage upon the emotions to neutralize the former—to blunt the analytical and critical faculties of the individual and even paralyze his thought processes completely. This is the method of the propagandist turned into a hate-monger and a rabble-rouser, who, by hammering persistently at the emotions and fanning continuously the flames of the irrational forces within the individual, hopes that his victim would become impervious to any rational appeal and that any information that may reach him would be blurred and obscured, even meaningless. In that manner, if he is successful, he does immunize and insulate the individual against hostile propaganda and also the information that may reach him from the other competitors. He achieves something else, too. He transfers the behavior controls from the individual into his own hands as the inner controls collapse with the neutralization of the mental faculties. It is for this reason that there is no basic difference between the propaganda techniques used in a totalitarian state and those employed within a democracy. They both reflect the same principles; and they both aim at the same objective: an individual thoroughly drained of all powers of discrimination, of all critical and reasoning ability, and reduced to the lowest possible human plane, the emotional, where he can

operate only under external, and hence artificial stimulation and guidance. It is really immaterial to the propagandist whether the individual is reduced to that state by the direct manipulation of his intellectual faculties or by a crushing attack upon his emotions so long as he can create the type of person he needs, the anchorless, rudderless, highly excitable unit of humanity with a strong affinity toward others of the same make, ready to combine with them and form a homogeneous, solid

mass. That is what he strives for whether in a totalitarian or a nontotalitarian system, whether through direct or indirect methods. In the totalitarian societies he attains his goal faster, and more completely. But irrespective of where he is operating, there does appear to be a certain logic inhering in his work that keeps on pushing him toward the com-

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148

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Comes

of Age

plete annihiliation of individuality. Some succeed in accomplishing this, some, of course, fail; but they all seem to try it. A most vivid account of how the Nazis utilized some of these techniques to transform the average German into a Nazi is given by H. B. Gisevius in his book To the Bitter End: “Abruptly men’s spirits changed. A wild national jubilation broke out. Banners, garlands, testimonials, laudatory telegrams. worshipful orations,

changes of street names, became as commonplace as parades and demonstrations. Victory celebrations, community appeals, followed one another in rapid-fire succession. The glorious sensation of a new fraternity overwhelmed all groups and classes. Professor and waitress, labor and industrialist, servant girl and trader, clerks, peasants, soldiers, and

government workers—all of them suddenly learned what seemed to be the greatest discovery of the century—that they were comrades of one race, ‘Volksgenossen’. Above all, youth, youth was getting its due. The dreary past was forgotten, even the oppressive present was hardly noticed in view of the transcendent future of this new, this Third Reich,

which was at last being established. “No wonder that the popular rejoicing verged on the ecstatic. Serenity vanished; all rational thinking, all inner restraint, were abandoned.

In

the end there remained nothing but black and white, good and evil; the whole world was divided into rascals and heroes, the past and the eternal, centuries of ignorance and a thousand years of salvation. Everything ran to superlatives”.* It is clear from this description that the devices the Nazis used are no different from those used by propagandists elsewhere. Parades with banners, testimonials, demonstrations, slogans, celebrations, cries of one race—it might have been one class, or one religion, or a common nationality—and an abundant use of symbols on all occasions. These are

the tools that those wishing to reach and manipulate the emotions of people must use. Such phrases as “Serenity vanished”, “all rational thinking, all inner restraint, were abandoned”, “everything became black and white, good and evil”, indicate that the individual German’s personality was being absorbed by the mass, that his individuality was being obliterated. That this was happening is further indicated by the apparent loss of all discriminating powers among people of all classes, professors, waitresses, peasants, and clerks, and others. How strongly the German people supported the various Nazi invasions and campaigns, and how willingly they followed and obeyed their leaders is well known; it is

BLACKJACK THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL THE BILL 1S NOT A “MODERATE” BILL AND IT HAS NOT BEEN “WATERED DOWN.” IT CONSTITUTES THE GREATEST GRASP FOR EXECUTIVE POWER CONCEIVED IN THE 20th CENTURY THE SOCIALISTS’ OMHIBUS BILL OF 1963 NOW BEFORE THE SENATE fe oaWhatne de hemite ete oaneee

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This advertisement in the Washington Post of March 9, 1964 attempts to transfer general hostility toward excessive executive power into opposition to civil rights legislation.

149

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also understandable in view of such treatment at the hands of the Nazi propagandists. The essence of propaganda as a promotional activity, it was noted, inheres in the propagandist’s attempt to mislead through distortion. How he distorts in the area of thought has been described. But can the meaning given to “distortion” in that area be retained as one follows the propagandist in that of feeling? The answer is, No. Distortion in the area

of thought was

apprehension

defined

of reality.

in terms

Emotion,

of the intellect’s

as was

function,

pointed out, performs

different function; it supplies the drive for action.

the

a

Distortion, therefore,

must be defined in terms of this different function. What then constitutes distortion in this new setting, and how can one

determine whether a propagandist distorts or not when dealing with the emotions? Aristotle has given us a standard in the quotation cited previously. Expression of emotion to the degree called for by the facts is rational and normal; any deviation—going too far, or not far enough —is irrational, and abnormal. The latter, if not induced by outside interference, may be considered analogous to the “natural” error discussed previously. When such deviations occur under external pressure, the natural expression of feeling is being distorted since the function itself of emotion is being obviously perverted. This is precisely what the propagandist attempts to do, for he sets out deliberately to generate and exploit such emotional irrationalities. He may suppress, bend, or twist the emotional force, or call forth feelings that might not be aroused at all were he not on the scene.

In that sense, he does distort,

for he interferes with the natural, rational flow of feeling. R.K. Merton puts it this way: “Appeals to sentiment within the context of relevant information and knowledge are basically different from appeals to sentiment which blur and obscure this knowledge. Mass persuasion is not manipulative when it provides access to the pertinent facts; it is manipulative when the appeal to sentiment is used to the exclusion of pertinent information.” ° Both Merton and Aristotle presumably would agree that an appeal to sentiment by a leader “within the context of relevant information” about a particular event, person, or situation, is not an attempt to arouse and

exploit false sentiments—to distort. would

people.

be to communicate

some

The purpose of such an appeal

genuine

conviction,

or to alert the

Such an appeal would not contain the element of exploitation,

or to use Merton’s terminology, is not manipulative.

It becomes

the

latter when fear or anger, love or hatred, pity or disgust, and other

MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL 1S A MAN WHO WATCHES THE SHOW ON A T.V. SET IN THE ITE

HOUSE...

NOW PLEASE STAND © SUPERMAN?! HE'S THE

6Y--T'LL o MFI CAN COLLAR SUPERMAN FOR AN INTERVIEW /

WITHIN THE HOUR... LS YoU WANTED TO SEE

.

YES, SUPERMAN! BUT EVEN

FOR A MAN WHO CAN MOVE

Tk > )MOUNTAINS )THE ASSIGNMENT IME, MA. PRESIDENT: / ssa DIFFICULT Mots Sata ke

L ANSWER TO OUR PROBLEM I MUST CONTACT HIM AT ONCE! a

YES, AAR,PRESIDENT!

IT SOUNDS LIKE A REAL CHALLENGE! HOW CAN I HELP you, PAR. PRESIDENT? —

BY LENDING YOUR SERVICES OUR FOREFATHERS WERE HARD TO_THE IMPORTANT JOB OF BECAUSE THEY WALKED To.ScHOOL,es= GETTING OUR YOUTH INTO CHOPPED TREES, TILLED THE SOIL / 4-1 PHYSICAL SHAPE!DESPITE | |BUT MODERN INVENTIONS LIKE THE THE MANY ORGANIZATIONS AND | |AUTO AND THE TRACTOR HAVE MADE INDIVIDUALS WORKING ON IT, OUR YOUTH *SOFT"/ MANY TEEN-AGERS MUCH REMAINS TOBE et | FEEL THEY HAVE NO NEED TO DEVELOP, THEMSELVES

PHYSICALLY ,”

BUT LOOK AT OUR ASTRONAUTS / NOT A SOFTIE WE MUST SHOW OUR YOUNGSTERS ‘WY 1 AGREE, IN THE BUNCH! COLONEL GLENN ATTRIBUTES THAT EVERYONE HAS TO KEEP FIT-- ] MR. PRESIDENT, THE SUCCESS OF HIS ORBITAL FLIGHT TO HIS NOT JUST SPORTS HEROES / AND I'LL DO ALL OWN PHYSICAL AND MENTAL FITNESS AS MUCH | | ONCE WE LOSE OUR PHYSICAL I CAN To HELP AS ANYTHING. AMERICAN YOUTH MUST THINK | | ALERTNESS, QUR MENTAL CLOSE THIS,., THE SAME

:

oy

WAY/

g

:

AWARENESS

i

WILL VANISH

AS WELL J ,

"MUSCLE

GAP*%’

An extract from a comic book entitled “Superman’s Mission For President Kennedy” According to the publisher this comic book was originally “prepared in close cooperation” with President Kennedy and issued because “President Johnson wanted it published”.

151

|

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Propaganda

Comes

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such feelings are aroused to an intensity unwarranted by the nature of the issue at hand. Such then is the nature of the propagandist’s play upon the feelings of an individual; and a glance at a few examples of their work will reveal how they go about it in dealing with specific situations. Consider again the cause of the anti-vivisectionists and their efforts to stop experimental work on living animals. It was noted how they twist the meaning of the experiments by overdrawing the pain an animal may suffer—even attributing a non-existent motive to the experimenters by depicting them as being possessed by the desire to “torture”—while considerably underplaying the chief purpose of experimentation. In that example they were attempting to influence the thinking of the man in the street. In another release they try to strike directly at the emotions. A little pamphlet entitled “Human Vivisection” with a pitcture of a beautiful little girl immediately below the title poses for the reader the following questions in bold type: Would

you like to have your baby inoculated with consumption

germs?

Would you like to have your daughter given the most awful disease known? Would you like your son to be inoculated with scarlet fever or poisonous pus? Would you like to have cancer grafted into your well breast so that it took root there?

Put in that manner no parent, of course, would say “yes” to any of those questions. The propagandist naturally knows that; and he no doubt asked them in that way to get an instantaneous “No” from the reader. He simply does not want the reader to spend any time considering the pros and cons to these questions, to debate with himself the favorable and unfavorable aspects of such possibilities. In short, he does not want him to think. He is only interested in arousing in him the strong feeling of fear and horror which an eventuality such as he suggests would normally arouse in a parent. That obviously is the intent in juxtaposing such emotionally charged words as baby-germs, daughter-disease, son-scarlet fever, and cancer-breast. With such a feeling aroused in the reader the propagandist then proceeds to what is his main objective, to have the reader transfer that emotion from the child to the animal. Nor does he rely entirely upon an automatic transfer of such emotion that would take place once the reader sees the animals in the position of the child. He speeds up that

Playing

on

the Emotions

153

transfer, and tries to insure that it would take place, by further claiming

that such a very close relationship exists between humans and animals that unless experimentation with the latter stops, humans also would be subjected soon to the same treatment. In fact, step by step in the pages that follow the assertion is made that animal vivisection would Cases are inevitably lead to general experimentation with humans. cited of children whose vaccination proved fatal; and of experiments performed upon poor, unprotected patients. The clincher comes on the last page in the form of a cartoon picturing a vivisector peering hopefully, one gathers, through a Charity Hospital window at an emaciatedlooking patient, while resting his one hand on a movable operating table carrying a worked-over animal and holding in his other what seems to be a more than adequate assortment of instruments of “torture.” In general, the purpose of this pamphlet is to arouse a particular emotion and have it transferred from one object to another. More specifically, this propagandist attempts to generate a powerfully hostile emotion of fear and perhaps anger by confronting the reader with a hypothetical yet so closely personal situation that, especially if he happens to be a parent, he might easily visualize it as a strong possibility, and hence be unable to restrain his feelings. Once aroused, such an emotion may then be extended to include a less personal and hence less important topic, such as vivisection would be to the average person. More often than not the propagandist does not have to resort to hypothetical situations in order to set in motion the particular feeling he needs for the moment. All of us have our likes and dislikes; things and people we cherish and admire, or are hostile to and would like to avoid. It is an easy matter for the propagandist to discover the particular symbol that controls a specific feeling, and, by forcing us to identify that symbol with the event with which he is very much concerned at the time, succeed in having that feeling transferred to the new conditions. Here is a case in point. During the national elections in 1940, a group calling itself “Guardians of the Republic” and operating from a post-office box address at a large eastern city distributed widely a leaflet entitled “Hands Across the Sea.” In it, supported by selected documentation, one found an account of the “Nazi Plan of Conquest of U.S.A.” The account was only incidental to the purpose of these propagandists; it merely set the stage for what they really set out to do, to arouse a strong hostility against the then candidate for the presidency, Wendell L. Willkie. This they thought they could do by taking advant-

Propaganda

154

Comes

of Age

age of Willkie’s German ancestry and linking him with the Nazi plot. One reads in that leaflet statements CAUGHT

such as these:

IN THE

WEB

In this stupendous plot, Wendell L. Willkie is the unwitting and accidental tool. That Wendell L. Willkie is opposed to Hitlerism is beside the point. That he is a decent and loyal American is beside the point. Adolph Hitler intends to hurdle all considerations of decency and morality in order to elect Wendell L. Willkie because Willkie’s election is the necessary starting point in Hitler’s plan to conquer America.

No other candidate could be used by Hitler in this plot. Because of his German background, only Wendell L. Willkie can be used as the first instrument in building a German group in America. That is why, whether he likes it or not, Wendell L. Willkie, is Adolph Hitler’s candidate for the presidency of the United States. GUARDIANS

OF THE

REPUBLIC

A vote for Willkie thus would become a vote for Hitler in the mind of the voter, unless he refused to go with the propagandist and see Willkie as Hitler’s candidate. The leaflet taken in its entirety illustrates rather vividly not only forced

identification

and

the transfer

of emotion,

but

many

of the

techniques encountered before, such as exaggeration, suppression, and especially unsupported generalizations. These last are utilized to give an air of authenticity to the plan to conquer the United States. Alleged

quotations from German authors such as “No Divided Allegiance For Germans,” “Blood Ties with Germany,” and “The Man of Our Race” are sprinkled elsewhere in the text to strengthen the genuineness of the plot, and more strongly link Willkie with it. The outstanding feature of the leaflet, however, remains the impact that it has on the emotional

band of the behavior spectrum. The propagandist who composed it obviously concentrated on having the reader stretch his disgust and anger, and other hostile feelings that he may have harbored against the Nazi movement, to enshroud Willkie too. Having the reader see the latter as a German linked by blood ties with Germany and its plot of conquest facilitated that task greatly. Finally, an interesting feature of this leaflet is the seemingly supreme confidence this propagandist has in the persuasive powers of his concoction.

He does not hesitate, for instance, to introduce ideas contrary

to his main argument: “Willkie is the unwitting and accidental tool”; “he is a decent and loyal American.” Possibly, in anticipation of such

Don’t let LBJ bankrupt Social Security

SENATOR GOLDWATER'S STAND ON

SECURITY

SOCIAL

“I favor a sogund Social Security system and I want to see it strengthened. I want to see every participant receive all the benefits this system provides. And I want to see these benefits paid in dollars with real purchasing power. ° Social Security is a system of basic protection for the aged. In addition, most Americans now participate in private pension plans while many have their own savings and investments. Social Security was never intended to replace voluntary programs. Its prime purpose was and is to supple-

ment them, to provide a basic floor. I am convinced it can do this job, the job for which it was created. We will not preserve the Social Security system if we saddle it with unnecessary new burdens, such medicare. We penalize every aged citizen if we thus bankrupt the system which protects them. Nor is the public interest served by those who label every sincere proposal to correct and perfect

the Social Security system as an attack on its basic principles. Essentially, protection against need in America depends on a free economy which produces an ever-growing abundance and an ever-greater opportunity

Security role.”

for

has

all.

a vital

In

this

and

framework,

legitimate

Social

supporting

Here the propagandist’s main target (Medicare) is subordinated to, and made to appear as a threat to something he knows the public favors, namely Social Security.

155

156

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

counter-claims from the opponent’s camp, he feels these could be easily disposed of in advance while the reader’s mind is still under the influence of the emotions he has attempted to arouse. There is also the possibility that by discounting such arguments as irrelevant at the outset, the reader may be preconditioned to withstand their force if, and when, they are put to him. It is apparently an attempt to render the reader immune against such arguments and enable him to throw them off as unimportant if he encountered them. A somewhat similar technique of manipulating emotion was used in the case of that notorious picture released during the senatorial elections in Maryland (1950) and showing Senator Tydings presumably in friendly conversation with communist Earl Browder. The picture was a fake, a complete fabrication, and those who produced it admitted that

much, though in a rather obscure manner. it read as follows:

The caption they attached to

Communist leader, Earl Browder, shown at left in this composite picture, was a star witness at the Tydings committee hearings, and was cajoled into saying Owen Lattimore and others accused of disloyalty were not Communists. Tydings (right) answered: ‘Oh, thank you, sir... Browder testified in the best interests of those accused, naturally.

Technically, therefore, one might say there was no attempt here to distort reality since the reader was informed that the pitcure was a “composite.” But consider the average reader, would he pay more attention to one word out of many or what his eyes caught easily: a picture of two men apparently in conversation—especially since this is further suggested by that “Oh, thank you, Sir’? It is very obvious that the propagandist’s intent was to block the critical faculty of the viewer who either may not have paid much attention to the word “composite,” or, if he did, may not have realized its full significance. He intended to allow the senses to supply the illusion which would facilitate the transfer of the hostile feelings held toward Browder to Senator Tydings—which was the propagandist’s primary objective after all. The last two examples reflect some common characteristics that are worth noticing. First, in both cases the identification the propagandist seeks to achieve is not between the person he is manipulating (the voter) and someone else, but that between a figure (Hitler or Browder) toward whom the individual is already emotionally conditioned and a new one (Willkie or Tydings) to whom the same emotion must be

Playing on the Emotions

157

transferred. Second, both releases are geared to a definite point in time, the date of the election. The time the action sought must take place is known in advance to both propagandists. As this allows them to regulate the degree of emotional excitation to which they may subject the voter, and as both examples reveal an intensive agitation of the emotions, the action anticipated by both propagandists was apparently imminent.

A different approach would be needed if the conditions just noted did not prevail—if the time the desired action were to take place was neither imminent nor foreseen, or the identification sought involved the individual being propagandized and the propagandist’s client or cause. The tone of the propaganda material would also be different, for with the time for action indeterminate it would be imprudent to arouse the individual’s emotions to a high pitch since such a state cannot be maintained for long. It would be wiser to keep only a slow-burning flame under them ready to increase it only as the time for action approached. Propaganda material produced under these conditions generally tends to be more sober, and tamer than the ones just looked into. The propagandist has ample time to forge the common image of the individual propagandized and the propagandist’s sponsor, and build up attitudes in the former through less crude distortions of reality than the previous examples displayed. He has the time to be more subtle and more convincing, and in the long run perhaps more effective. Consider the following sample. An attractively illustrated questionnaire® is addressed to the average housewife. It’s a long job, six large pages containing 33 questions that the housewife is asked to answer, with drawings thrown in at strategic intervals to illustrate some of the important aspects in the housewife’s daily routine. This is a good trick to insure the housewife’s retention of her reactions to those important facets of her daily work. The whole piece reflects an extraordinary subtlety, an underlying unobtrusive intelligence guiding the housewife to answer these questions in the manner

desired by the propagandist. Let’s examine the essential features of this questionnaire. The home “for letters: smaller in title is in large letters: “EXECUTIVES’ Quiz” managers.” The scene depicted in the drawing immediately below these titles, and covering more than half the page, is the housewife’s kitchen, but the kitchen table in the middle of the room is somehow made to resemble an “executive’s” desk. The children and the dog playing on the floor, and

158

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

the delivery man ready to enter through the kitchen door with the supplies retain the kitchen atmosphere. But at the table, Mrs. Housewife seems to be entirely preoccupied with executive, or managerial functions. With telephone to her ear, she appears to be giving some sort of an order to someone at the other end; and she does have the appearance of knowing her mind, and her place as well as that of the other person in this invisible relationship. At the top of the table there are a telephone stand, an open ledger in front of her, a small filing case, paper and pen—all tools, and symbols of the managerial profession. The first sentence in capital letters, which follows the drawing, makes sure that the housewife got the message the drawing is intended to convey, or gives it to her in plain words, in case she missed it altogether: “You Know TuHaT BEING A HousEwIFE Is BEING AN EXECUTIVE.” With identification presumably accomplished through the titles, drawing, and that sentence, this promoter now throws a challenge to the housewife: “How SuccESSFUL AN EXECUTIVE ARE YOU?” In so doing he removes the discussion from the theoretical realm of generalities, and brings it down to the level of the personal, where he holds it to the very end by his questions. These questions, incidentally, have been grouped around certain themes. Take the first seven questions which have been built around the theme: “How Good a Purchasing Agent Are You?” The housewife’s mind is thus channeled into thinking of the various ramifications of the art of purchasing, such as the selection of goods on the basis of price, and quality; or the purchasing of household commodities “when the market is most favorable,” or at other advantageous times such as periodic sales. The eight questions that follow revolve around another feature of managerial effort. The housewife is now asked: “How Good a Secretary-Treasurer Are You?

And the questions she is asked to answer fix in her mind responsibilities such as paying bills on time; keeping accurate accounts; allocating portions of income to future as well as current needs, and other similar duties. These, in turn, are followed by groups of questions asking the housewife to evaluate herself as a “Plant Manager,” a “Personnel Executive,”

and a “Public Relations Director.” Again, the specific questions she is told to answer reflect a subtle, calm intelligence at work, and drive her

further and further toward the obliteration of all differences that may exist in her mind between a housewife and an executive.

How Good a Purchasing Agent Are You?

1.

Do you use advertisements and catalogs

to compare

prices?

Thiways)

Wsually)

(Seldon)

2.

Do you examine

3.

Do you buy in quantities

4.

Do you check your supplies of food staples, clothing nd household articles, so you can buy them when the market is most favorable?

Thinays)

TAiweys)

Tkineys)

quality as well as price?

TUsually)

TSeldom)

whenever it means

a saving?

(Usually) #8 Seldom)

(Usually)

{Seldom}

5.

Do you plan your well-balanced menus and make up shopping lists before going shopping, so you can take advantage of special bargains?

6,

Do you carry with you a list of family clothing sizes, measurements of beds, windows, floor and wall spaces, color combinations, etc., to save you time when unexpected sales are discovered?

7.

Do you keep records, either mental or written, on taste appeal of food brands or the wearing

TAlrays)

TAlways)

quélities

TUsually)

TSeldom)

(Usually)

Seldom

of dry goods brands?

TAlways J

(Usually)

(Seldom)

How Good 8 Secretary-Treasurer Are You? 8.

Do you maintain a good credit atores in your tom?

Thineys)

(Usually)

rating with the

TSeldom}

Aimed at identification of the housewife with big business, this

quiz appears in a pamphlet published by the National Association of Manufacturers several years ago.

159

160

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

She is asked, for example, whether in planning the work around the home, she is not “assigning jobs to each member most fitted to them?” And in a drawing, one notices the little girl engaged in sewing; Junior pushing the vacuum cleaner; and “hubby” standing on a stool hammering a nail into the wall, for some very good purpose no doubt. Nor can one fail to notice Mrs. Housewife

herself in, the corner

of the room,

somewhat removed from the field of this humming activity; yet as the artist apparently wishes to convey, in the throes of some vigorous planning, thinking up, who knows what further deviltry. Similarly she is asked if she frequently calls a meeting of the whole family to “plan your future together?” and, whether she does not deliberately make the effort to “deserve the reputation in your community as a ‘fine family.’ ” A cynic—especially if he happens to be a husband—may at this point wonder whether this housewife would not forget she is a housewife, or perhaps even a wife, as she goes through this wringer. He may further worry about the lot of the apparently thoroughly domesticated male perched precariously on that stool and hammering that nail according to dear wife’s plan; and that of all the husbands whose wives may be subjected to such a catechism and come out with all those grandiose ideas. It is doubtful that the propagandist preparing this exercise was much concerned with such by-products. He was given, or set himself up an objective, and he is trying to attain it. What is his real goal; and how is he trying to reach it? The manner in which the human drive toward identification with something higher is harnessed and cleverly directed by the propagandist in this instance has already been noted. What then does the propagandist hope to gain through this psychological manipulation? The answer is to be found in a short statement near the end of the questionnaire. It reads as follows: You’ve been able to see the similarity between your household management jobs and top management jobs in industry. The problems businesses face are the same as those you face in your roles of “treasurer”, “plant manager”, “public relations director” and all the others.

Confident that he has succeeded in making the housewife see herself as an executive, he can now let her in on a little secret: management has a few problems. And, of course, problems imply enemies, or at least adversaries.

Playing

on

the Emotions

161

Having slowly and subtly retained and reinforced the identification through all these carefully chosen questions; having gradually forged what he hopes to be enduring emotional links between the housewife and management, the propagandist does not hesitate to take the final step in the completion of this emotional involvement pattern. In that short statement, he elbows the housewife into projecting identity of roles into identity of problems. Management’s problems are her problems; management’s cause, her cause. Let an issue now arise in the community Management knows where to find staunch involving management. supporters and allies. It is significant that in none of the questions asked of this housewife is there even a suggestion that some of her activities either within or outside the home may come under the label of “labor.” Nor is there any reference to non-economic interests she may have, political, religious, or educational. She is indeed put through a wringer and comes out at the end as the “Economic Woman”; though even that is narrowed down to include only managerial elements. Some secondary features of this exercise are no less brilliantly conceived and executed than the whole.

There is a meticulous cultivation,

for instance, of attitudes favorable to what we might call the auxiliaries of management, such as purchasing agents, secretaries and treasurers, and public relations directors. Taken altogether, these attitudes no doubt help fix securely in the housewife’s consciousness the pride and respect, not to say affection, that she has already been made to extend from herself to management. They are powerful emotional links strengthening her emotional attachment to management. In addition, there are a few subsidiary manipulations which also directly or indirectly may further considerably the cause of management. It would not hurt the interests of management, for example, if in the process of answering some of the questions our housewife became conscious of the value of paying her bills on time; or, of investing her savings to produce interest. Nor will her trust in management diminish when it finally dawns on her— for there are several hints in that direction—that managerial operations are so organized that all activities may be pursued with the highest possible degree of efficiency. These too are links which in conjunction with those previously mentioned constitute a formidable chain to hold the housewife solidly attached emotionally to management. This emotional absorption of an individual by the propagandist’s group through identification constitutes a basic goal of all interest groups,

162

Propaganda

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of Age

large or small, in their efforts to build up their strength and compete successfully. It is a basic goal, for once attained many of the other psychic processes referred to earlier may be set in motion and profitably exploited. Take our housewife, for instance. As she goes through the questionnaire she is building up step by step an image of herself as an “executive” and wrapping herself in an aura of prestige, power, efficiency and all the other virtues that go with such a symbol. Inevitably a general sense of self-confidence and self-respect, and inner pride, rises within her. For all feelings of inadequacy, all fears and doubts of her capacities may

vanish after such an identification. To retain this state of mind—a highly desirable objective from management’s point of view since the strength of her allegiance depends on it—especially when things don’t go exactly as she had planned and doubts begin to rise and trouble her, it may be necessary to unload these doubts on somebody else, to project those disturbing feelings on some scapegoat. Management’s adversaries in this case would automatically serve as such handy scapegoats upon whom she may shower all the blame. Projection thus could be easily utilized by those in control (the propagandists) to induce a personal catharsis if needed and at the same time maintain a high morale within the ranks of the group. Neither objective would be attainable if previous efforts at identification had not been successful. Other psychic processes, rationalization and displacement for example, may also be set in motion or otherwise exploited once identification is attained. For the ramifications of identification are indeed many. The process, as it was pointed out, does not terminate with the completion of the identity of roles; it continues, pulling in and embracing into a general pattern such things as problems, causes, foes and friends of the person or persons one identifies himself with. It may vary in intensity of feeling with respect to any of these from one time to another as the scene of action and interest changes. Whoever controls the mechanism of identification is in the position of initiating, strengthening, or otherwise controlling any of the other processes. Hence the propagandist’s constant concern with this process. Through it, he gains new recruits, and molds the personalities of the new members; through it also, he preserves the mold of the old. But propaganda is born of conflict. The propagandist’s concern with his group’s strength is only one phase of the task he must perform. In fact his own group’s strength, relative as it is to that of his opponent's, could be made considerably more effective were the latter’s to be under-

Playing

on

the Emotions

163

mined or in some way neutralized. This the propagandist can do by depriving his adversary of the advantages of identification—by checking the rival propagandists’ efforts to build up the strength of his group, or For this, a different even undoing what he may have accomplished. technique is required, dissociation. Dissociation in reality is identification in reverse. For the propagandist resorting to it, instead of forging those emotional links that bind the individual to a group, begins to break them one by one until the individual is completely detached from his group affiliations and, devoid of all loyalities, is left “group-less,” and an easy prey to any final psychological assault the propagandist may unleash at him. The most frequent and intensive use of this technique is to be found in wartime—“subversive” propaganda, for instance, is of this character— though amateurish attempts at its use domestically have been known from time to time especially in the political field. Revolutionary groups usually employ it aggressively before they establish themselves in power, methodically and more extensively once they are in the saddle. During World War II, for example, among the many leaflets and other propaganda material that circulated among the German troops at the front lines were two miniature posters. One showed a German soldier “crucified” on a swastika, the other a deadly spider with the swastika stamped on its body holding two obviously very dead German soldiers in its web and one alive enough to be aiming a knife at the spider’s head. There was no message on either poster—that would have been superfluous. Nor was the source from which they were distributed identified. Did they come from some group within Germany, or were they produced by the Allies? The intent was obvious; and the question may be raised: How long would a German soldier retain his allegiance and loyalty to the Nazi regime if exposed continuously to suggestions of that sort? The scope of this technique becomes evident by another question. If the German soldier is against the Nazis, why not the German businessman, or the professional man—the

doctor, the lawyer, or the teacher?

The possibilities are only limited in fact by the number of such specialized groups the enemy’s society may possess, the more complex his social system the greater the number of targets for such an attack. On the other hand, the very complexity of a social system tends to check this technique’s effectiveness, for the more groups an individual belongs to the more difficult becomes the task of dislodging him, or stripping him of all his loyalties, and isolating him.

Propaganda

164

Comes

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The technique of dissociation is also exemplified by some of the leaflets the Axis propagandists dropped on our troops in the Pacific theatre. Taking advantage of a Christmas period the enemy geared his medium to the Yuletide spirit and showered our men with Christmas cards. Some, beautifully decorated with multi-colored bells and ribbons, innocently extended the friendly message “Best Wishes” to the soldier— on the outside. Inside, however, the true nature of the enemy’s intent was revealed. Printed on one side of the card was the following: A MAN’S

FOES

SHALL

BE THEY

OF HIS OWN St.

HOUSEHOLD. Matthew

10, 36.

On the other side is a message clearly intended to undermine the soldier’s loyalty to a democratic America and sever, if possible, the emotional attachment to his country. It reads: So it is with a country’s foes. Of course, you know that under the guise of Democratic America, there is the Plutocratic Dynasty of America’s sixty wealthiest families, such as the Morgans, the duPonts, the Rockfellers, the Drexels, the Sloans, the Vanderbilts, the Roosevelts, etc., etc. It is these Dynasty rulers, you

may well know, that plunged America into war in order to reap its fruits by the toil, sweat, blood and tears of you American

soldiers.

Others, also of high artistic quality, exuded a similar warmth and friendliness, again on the outside, but were primarily aimed at snapping the link that tied the soldier emotionally to the leader of his country, the President. One in particular showed a nostalgic holiday winter scene and had the message “GoopwILL To MEN” in Gothic type printed underneath. Inside, it contained the following message: YE CANNOT

SERVE

GOD

AND

MAMMON.

St. Matthew 6, 24

PRESIDENT

ROOSEVELT CANNOT SERVE THE AND THE (sic) BIG BUSINESS

PEOPLE

There were still others, but of the same nature, all showing the enemy propagadists hard at work attempting to break a link here and a link there, hoping presumably that with patience, time, and perseverance they might succeed in completely dissociating the individual soldier from all his group allegiances and stripping him of all his values, and all sense of right and wrong.

A cartoon in a Japanese leaflet dropped on American troops in the Pacific during World War Il. Its text is discussed on page 167.

EWELL, AMERICAN SOLDIERS!

es}

=s

‘

You

are

atfil allvel

What

a miraclel

And

marching,

too.

But

WHERE?

To

=the PhillppinesT To Tokyot But do you know what awaits you in the Philippines?

“let me tell you. It le the Japanese forces with the combined support, both moral and material, ef al! the awakened Asiatice—the Manchukueans, Chinese, Filipinos. Annamese, Thailanders, Burmese, Indians, Malayans and Indonesians. And the Jape-

meee cre there to pound you incessantly and relentlessly ae you should have knows, Perhapa they may retreat temporarily, but only to atteck you again with double fiercenese after your reinforcements have arrived. Day in and day out the Jape-

“nese troops are alec pushing to the front im ever-inereasing numbers, entire Asia

© behind them!

will comtinoe,

And remember,

As long es you persistin marching west, the ettacks

weleome from the land, alr and see. The reverberation of thelr rousing welcome must even pow be to your

Innumerable

strongholds

are

all sat to give you

hearty

ears.

But thie is not all. There te etill another thing in store fog you along the Philfppines front. What

is thie thing? I will again answer you. It Is a gravé, YOUR GRAVEL Nobody cam say where ft exactly ig, but it ts certain that It does exist somewhere im

* the Philippines, ond you are bound to find It sooner or later, far or near, Todtrt Temerrow!

Whe

your greve—as on

marching

knows!

But

one

thing

Ia positive,

positive es the sum ects in the west. west?

If so, I shall

have

to carve

You

Officers

an

epitaph

are

heeding

west fer

and men, you still insiet for you.

There are only two definite things om earth. LIFE and DEATH. The difference eeiween LIFE and DEATH i¢ absolute. One cannot rely upon the dead; no one ean make {riende with the dead; the dead ean neither speak nor mingle with the

Hing. If you Inelet on marching west, we (by we 1 meas all jiving things) must bid you goodbye and stop bothering with you, because we, the Mving, are toe busy to have anything to do with the ded Your politicians are among those who survive and are enjoying Jife eqmfortably

at home.

General

Marshel!

and Genora}

MacArthur

ean enjoy

uheiz reputation as heroes only because they are alive, But you. » you continue to march westwards to sure death, to keep your rendesvous with

you, ‘the grave. The came belds true for your comrades-In-arme who are pathetically struggling to escape their ultimate fate. The graves await 80, officers and men, I bid you «@ pitiful goodbre. Today, you are with the Iiving-.tomorrow, with the dead. Be and you, and ALL OF YOU! egain geodbye, American soldiers|...... Farewell}...... Farewell!,.....

Japanese propaganda aimed at demoralizing the American soldier by disassociating him from the war effort via threats of death.

165

166

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

The Indeed this technique has all the earmarks of brainwashing. and control remote by operate to has however, case, this in brainwasher hence is deprived of the support of all the auxiliary means that a brainwasher operating in a prisoner-of-war camp may employ. He cannot isolate, starve, or otherwise torture his prospective victim. He is limited only to mental manipulation, and this too may not be wholly under his control. Several factors, on the other hand, which are no longer operative in a prisoners’ camp may work to his advantage. Battle fatigue is one. The war has ended for the prisoner, but the soldier must go on shedding sweat, and blood perhaps, suffering the fears of uncertainty about his life, that of his comrades, and victory. Under such conditions values, ideals, abstractions in general tend to lose their force; and risks involving more immediate and tangible things, such as death to himself

or his friends, or injury, even possible capture or defeat tend to acquire a greater significance. A soldier under such physchological pressure will unconsciously and hence automatically seek some justification, some rationalization, for any act of his which in his eyes was responsible for some setback, or for the weakening of the desire to go on that he might feel rising within himself. The propagandist in these samples is supplying that soldier with all sorts of rationalizations hoping that some of them might hit the soldier in a receptive mood and induce him either to quit or at least become less effective as a fighter. The battle conditions are therefore working on the side of the propagandist since they help to put the soldier in that receptive mood. There are others also tending to generate that kind of a mood among troops in combat. What if such conditions did produce a favorable, receptive mood and the propagandist sensed that his rationalizations were taking root, would he be satisfied with the mere task of offering his target tailor-made alibis, or would he proceed to some further task, a new phase in his attack? The ultimate objective of dissociation is the complete disengagement of the individual from all his previous attachments—the aimless, rudderless individual is, in fact, the terminal point of this process since further dissociation is practically impossible. If the propagandist, therefore, is successful in his dissociative endeavor, he must alter his method of attack upon the individual as that person’s nature has undergone a transformation due to previous manipulation. The question then is, What kind of manipulation is the individual susceptible to in his new condition? From the propagandist’s point of view, he now has to deal with an individual who has been reduced practically to a state of animality. De-

Playing on the Emotions

167

prived of all values and loyalties and all previous patterns of behavior that such values supported and directed, the individual is in reality left aimless and any actions that he may be induced to undertake must be motivated and controlled by mere instinct. No stimulus which does not immediately involve some natural urge or drive could evoke any response from an individual in that particular state of mind. A direct assault, on the other hand, against those innate drives may set in motion action that

would fit nicely into a pattern that the propagandist exploiting such a This is the kind of attack that the situation might have planned. dissociated individual finds himself exposed to; and that is the new phase that the propagandist’s work must enter into under these conditions. Such a situation is rare indeed; and it is one that wartime propagandists especially dream about. For an enemy soldier in that condition cannot withstand for long a direct, concentrated barrage against his instincts which have been exposed and have been deprived of the protective overcoating that his society had superimposed. At any rate, either some of our troops had found themselves in such a predicament, or the Japanese propagandists were day-dreaming blissfully when they produced and distributed materials such as these: A leaflet depicts an American soldier stranded in the middle of the jungle and being attacked simultaneously by a determined Japanese soldier, a fierce wild animal, and a giant mosquito. The American soldier is obviously bewildered and frightened (and who wouldn’t be!) and is warned: BEWARE

OF

THE

TRIPLE

Hi, Joe, I sure hate to be in your shoes! helluva place to land.

ESE

THREAT!!!

Your commander

certainly chose a

Don’t you know what dangers confront you in Mindoro?

They are the TAMARAOS, the ANOPHELES MOSQUITOS, and the JAPANSOLDIERS. The tamaraos are the fiercest animal on earth, found only in Mindoro. When

you march through the jungles, look out!

They come at you unawares and you’re a dead man before you know what hit you. The Anopheles mosquitoes are veritable “malaria bombers.” And believe me, they don’t give a damn when or where they hit. And once hit you’re a goner. And the Japanese soldiers! They’re worse than the tamaraos or the Anopheles mosquitoes. You should know without my telling you. By the way, Joe. Mindoro means “mina de oro” or “mine of gold” in your lingo. Dig for some in your spare time. Even if you fail to locate any, the hole will still serve as your grave. So long, pal.

168

Propaganda

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Another, has a skillfully drawn hand covering practically half of its surface squeezing between thumb and index finger what at first glance appears to be a tooth-paste tube but on closer inspection turns out to be a soldier. The palm is brilliantly red, and so is the fluid that is being squeezed out of the soldier. A number of “emptied tubes” are strewn in the background. The caption on this is brief: IT’S YOUR

BLOOD,

DOUGHBOYS! BUT MORE AND BE SQUEEZED OUT!

STILL MORE

IS TO

A third, more gruesome than the previous one, uses the head of an American soldier to personify death itself, and carries the rather pointed caption: “FAREWELL, AMERICAN SOLDIERS!”’, and a message that concludes: You continue to march westwards to sure death, to keep your rendezvous with the grave. The same holds true for your comrades-in-arms who are pathetically struggling to escape their ultimate fate. The graves await you, and you, and ALL

oF You! So, officers and men, I bid you a pitiful goodbye. Today, you are with the living—tomorrow, with the dead. So again goodbye. American soldiers! . . Farewell! .. . Farewell! ..

Many others of a similar nature are addressed to the basic drive of selfpresevation revolving with variations around the same theme, death. Still others are directed at another basic drive, sex. A highly imaginative leaflet, for instance,

shows only part of a woman’s

face, her mouth,

surrounded by a black background that seems to enhance the sensuality the artist succeeded in imparting to the lips. The caption in white letters reads: “REMEMBER?”;

and on the back, the soldier is told:

Darling, can’t you find a way to come back to me? I miss you so. all my love and my kisses are on the other side of this card—

I send

And there are many variations on this theme too as one may very well imagine. This is the sort of treatment to which a person cut off from his social moorings may be subjected at the hands of the propagandist. The question, of course, is whether in this particiular case the troops to whom such leaflets were addressed were in the proper mood for such an attack. If they were not, and the Japanese propagandists were hitting at their instincts on general principles or out of desperation, one can only conclude that their propaganda did more damage to their cause than good.

ENDLESSLY/J»

A leaflet dropped on enemy troops in North Korea. It was intended to induce desire for surrender by promising good treatment at the hands of United Nations Forces under General Ridgway.

169

170

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

For such action would be a flagrant violation of the fundamental principle that propaganda to be effective must be in tune with the mental state of the recipient. Any propaganda that is not so geared is bound to backfire; in fact, it is worse than no propaganda. In this particular instance, one has only to imagine such a leaflet falling into the hands of an American soldier who is not fatigued, dirty, hungry,

and apprehensive about the next day, but instead rested, well-fed, exhilarated as a result of one successful engagement after another, and happy over news from home. What kind of reaction would such a leaflet arouse in him? In general such an attack against the basic human drives can succeed only to the extent that dissociation has run its course and the individual has been deprived of moral supports. Only complete demoralization would leave the individual totally helpless and an easy prey. Though this seems to be the ultimate objective of the propagandist’s attack against members of his opponent’s group, it is seldom attained; and if attained, it may not necessarily be solely due to the efforts of the propagandist but to other forces as well: political, military, or economic, which may be exherting an influence in that direction. Ordinarily, barring extraneous, non-propagandistic influences, the chief obstacle to the subversive propagandist’s efforts at dissociation and demoralization is the work of his counterpart in the opponent’s group, and especially the latter’s efforts at identification. The struggle for the individual’s loyalties is indeed a race between the two propagandists, what one tries to build up, the other tries to tear down, and vice versa. Thus the tasks of rival propagandists are practically endless. Here perhaps lies the explanation for the subversive propagandist’s rare attainment of his objective, complete demoralization; also, for the constructive propagandist’s usual failure to push the process of identification to its completion and produce the type of individual predicated by his technique, the fanatic—one who is so thoroughly identified with his group that his well-integrated personality structure and the resulting absolute loyalty render him immune to all ideas that run contrary to his group’s values and beliefs. The struggle for the individual’s mind, where rival propagandists are able to operate freely, goes on endlessly with most of the gains and losses usually incurred without either rival ever reaching his respective polar objective, the “group-less” individual, or the fanatic. Only on rare occasions, when circumstances place absolute control into the hands of one set of propagandists—another of the propagandist’s pet

Playing

on

the Emotions

171

dreams—and they can operate without interference, the average individual may find himself helpless and an easy victim to propagandistic manipulation, and may then be made to run the full course dictated by either process, identification, or dissociation.

It is precisely such a situation that Gisevius describes in telling us of

the activities of the Nazis in these words: “In the intellectual sphere, the brutal Nazification of public opinion the increasing harshness of the antisemitic laws, and the tenacious struggle with the Church, all had the same aim: the undermining of all traditional views of justice, morals and faith. The struggle for power was deliberately transferred to the intellectual sphere. The education of youth was removed as far as possible from the parental home; young Germany was educated in those Nazi institutions for producing an undifferentiated mass—the so-called Ordensburgen. The ‘breeding’ of men of the master race began. Day after day the masses were fed the Nazi poison in sweet and bitter pills; day after day they were made to swallow the slogan of the new morality: ‘Might makes right.’

“Almost inevitably this violent seizure of the spiritual realms, which had previously been under the protection of the school, church, and home, brought about a perverse mass psychosis. In the end the proletarianized masses must seek release from their predicament in war, in undisguised campaigns of conquest and plunder; they were forced by the Nazis to escape from economic and psychic nihilism into predatory activity, into snatching at the wealth of all their neighbors.” ” Here one sees the methodical application of dissociation to detach the German citizen from the traditional values and loyalties that clustered around the school, the family, and the church; also the use of identification to turn him into a loyal, fanatical Nazi, and all that that implied.

Nor is it a historical accident or mere coincidence, that long before the Nazis, the Communists subjected those very same institutions to a similar assault and, at present, the Chinese

Communists

are radically

“reconstructing” the Chinese family. In all these cases the progagandists knew, as every propagandist knows, that the individual’s emotions can be reached only through the groups to which he may happen to belong, and may be manipulated only through the symbols that make such membership meaningful to him.

CHAPTER

THE CHANNELING

10

OF ACTION

“It is possible to drive whole communities of modern men clean crazy —as crazy as a herd of Gadarene swine—by sheer tomfoolery, claptrap, and jargon.”—John Hargrave.

Action, or the release of energy in response to some inner urge or external stimulus, is the third large band in the spectrum of human conduct.

In one sense, it is the link that binds the individual to his

environment, for through the proper responses to that environment the individual succeeds in establishing the equilibrium between himself and the outer

world

necessary

for his survival.

In another,

it is at the

moment of its expression the culmination of the psychic process that operates within the individual during his efforts at adaptation. For, to be released, human energy must first be mobilized and harnessed. It must also be given direction, and volume. Against or for whom, for instance, and with how much spirit and vigor should the individual react? Unlike animal organisms, the human is not biologically equipped with ready-made responses to life situations. Human instincts, as noted, play only a minor role in determining the character of human conduct. Devoid of predetermined responses, the human individual must fall back on those purely human capacities nature has endowed him with: the ability to perceive and to abstract forms and relationships of things; to memorize and handle mentally, and in advance, situations he may have to deal with; and all other human attributes that place human conduct on a level higher than that of the animal’s one-dimensional, instinct-response pattern. Human reaction to outer reality is two-dimensional. First, there is the actual response itself; and second, the mobilization of the organism’s energies which instinctive inadequacy makes mandatory. The former is a release of energy in the outer world; the latter, a marshalling of that energy through a process that takes place within the individual’s psyche. The actual response is but the objective manifestation of an inner, subjective process. It is in that manner that the individual finds himself inextricably linked to the outer reality; reacting to it, and being reacted upon in the give-and-take preoccupation with adaptation.

172

The Channeling

of Action

173

It is the marshalling of internal energies to meet external exigencies that gives human action its characteristic human flavor. In this task all of man’s adaptive capacities must participate, each to play its part in defining and appraising every demand for his attention, in choosing the proper response and estimating the probable consequences of possible failure or success. None of these capacities can perform the task alone; all must contribute to it, each according to its function. Knowledge alone, as indicated earlier, does not lead to action; nor is feeling alone likely to induce it. Action, involving as it does the whole of the individual’s personality, must pull into play all of the individual’s resources. Hence, in this task of mobilizing the individual’s energies all of the factors that determine whether the individual would release or hold back these energies are in operation. Whether the individual does one or the other in a particular instance, and to what extent, rests solely on his appraisal of the nature, and significance to him, of the specific event, person, or object demanding his attention, and the probable after-effects that may follow his response. The appraisal of the specific demands on the individual’s attention, or possible response, is the opinion the individual formulates with reference to the particular event, person, or object making the demand. The steps of arriving at such an estimate constitute the opinion-making process. Both product and process are quite distinct from any other product,

or manifestation,

of the human

mind.

For example, the kind of thinking the individual engages in in reaching such an evaluation is quite different from the purely intellectual effort involved in observing phenomena and seeking uniformities and principles that might reveal their true nature and relationships. Significantly, as has been noted previously, such intellectual objectives could be pursued effectively only if the emotions are kept in check, and at a distance, so to speak. The individual pursuing them is a “thinker.” In contrast, the individual confronted with some specific demand for action is a “doer;” he must act, outwardly or inwardly. Being human, he must think before he acts. His thinking is now motivated not by the discovery of some truth, but by the very important necessity of responding to his surroundings. Both his intellect and emotions are now involved, as both previous knowledge and feelings must be put into operation. Indeed, one might say that all his former experiences, both intellectual and emotional, have been directed towards this particular moment. For the knowledge he has accumulated and

the values and attitudes he has acquired are now

set in motion to

174

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

yield the specific estimate that the individual must reach. The individual therefore must think, but his thinking now commingles with his feelings which inject a subjective quality to it, slanting his response to a concrete person or object in accordance with the biases and prejudices that these might evoke. Opinions then are compounds containing both an intellectual and an emotional element with the ratio of each varying according to the amount of knowledge or the degree of feeling the individual may put into them in the process of formulating them. They are different from the objective demonstrations of a scientist, or the dogmatic assertions of a theologian, for they cannot be supported rationally as the former and are more plastic than the latter. They vary in duration also as well as strength. Some are strong and of long duration; others, the opposite; both their strength and time-span being reflections of the importance of the situation to the individual (whether it is permanent, or temporary), the certainty with which he holds on to the knowledge he possesses, and the vigor of his convictions. Some have more depth than others, and hence, a greater resistance to change. But all of them, taken collectively, do constitute

the chief instrument of adaptation of the average man confronted as he is daily with the problem of adjusting to life situations about which he may have little knowledge, but to which, nevertheless, he may have to respond. An apt description of the average man as he may be found at any particular moment has been given by W. Trotter: “If we examine the mental furniture of the average man, we shall find it made up of a very precise kind upon subjects of very great variety, complexity, and difficulty. He will have fairly settled views upon the origin and nature of the universe, and upon what he will probably call its meaning; he will have conclusions as to what is to happen to him at death and after, as to what is and what should be the basis of conduct. He will know how the country should be governed, and why it is going to the dogs, why this piece of legislation is good and that bad. He will have strong views upon military and naval strategy, the principles of taxation, the use of alcohol and vaccination, the treatment of influenza, the prevention of hydrophobia,

upon municipal trading, the teaching of Greek, upon what is permissible in art, satisfactory in literature, and hopeful in science. “The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by

The Channeling

of Action

175

the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have any opinion upon them at all.” 7 It is this average man who has neither the time nor perhaps the inclination to try and understand fully all the relevant facts in any particular life situation that, as a citizen, he may be called upon by his community to act, to vote, on any of these issues; or by other citizens, to express his views upon them. Obviously, he must rely

upon the partly-rational, partly-irrational judgments (his opinions) when faced with such demands. The distinct quality of the opinion-making process is further revealed by the fact that some general laws peculiar to itself underly it. In Public Opinion and Communication by Berelson and Janowitz, for instance, Hadley Cantril’ presents twenty specific generalizations which could serve to explain both the nature and function of opinion. Three of them, the first three in fact, are of particular pertinence.

The first one, for example, states: “An opinion is formed when, and only when, you face a frustrating situation where a judgment is required on which you must base action that will help you carry out a purpose.” Opinion is rooted in “frustrating situations,” in situations that contain elements unknown, or baffling, to the individual, and about which the individual feels some uncertainty as to the proper response. Were it otherwise, were the individual thoroughly familiar with all the significant aspects of the situation, his response to it would not be based on such a tenuous judgment as opinion, but instead would follow some habitual pattern which had been proven adequate on previous occasions. What frustrates the individual really is his temporary incapacity to grasp that unknown fact, which, for all he knows, may indeed be a rather important one. Since he has to act, however, a hypothetically sound judgment, which is what every opinion is after all, is apparently better than no judgment. The second principle is as follows: “An opinion is built up from past experience as a guide to purposive action.” In this brief statement, Cantril manages to capture and depict tersely the whole behavior spectrum, and in the process indicate both the role of opinion as well as its relation to the other bands. Opinion is “built up from past experience”; as such it is a reflection of the individual’s thoughts and feelings. Further, it serves as a “guide to purposive action,” to

the responses the individual must make to the outer world. It follows then that opinion is the bridge that connects the inner with the outer

Propaganda

176

Comes

of Age

reality, the subjective with the objective world. Of all human attributes opinion is the one that determines the impact of the individual on that outer world. In a sense, it is the sharp edge of human personality, the characteristically human tool that man utilizes to play an active rather than a passive part in meeting life’s issues—to resolve them, change them, or, perhaps even complicate them. In his third principle, Cantril puts more weight on the opinion process itself. He says: “An opinion is based chiefly on unconscious cues which are mustered together and integrated when their relevance in forming a value-judgment for purposive action is aroused by some situation.” Opinion is not the product of rational thinking alone, but of a host of “unconscious cues” as well that may be agitating the individual at some given point in time. It is the culmination, as noted, of the interplay of the psychic forces of the individual, for it is these forces that marshall and integrate the unconscious cues, and those that conscious thinking might introduce. The field of opinion, therefore, containing as it does the decisive as well as the direct determinants

of the individual’s

overt actions, is

of special interest to anyone interested in manipulating those actions —the propagandist, in this case. To get the desired action at the right time,

as it has been

pointed

out, is the continuous

and

sole

concern of the propagandist—the overall objective of all his efforts. This may not be so obvious when his efforts are only indirectly related to that action—when he attempts to influence thought and feeling, for instance; it is blatantly clear, however,

when

circumstances

force

him to enter the field of action and attempt to gain his objective through direct rather than indirect means, that is, through the manipulation of the opinion process itself, or even the actual responses in some cases. Direct manipulation of action, however, presents its own problems. The propagandist is now concerned not with imparting the “valid” truth, or the “proper” feeling to the individual about some issue that may confront him, and in which the propagandist may be vitally interested, but of planting the “correct” judgment in his mind, the one that would eventuate in the desired response and that in all probability the individual would not arrive at without some outside prodding. Working on the sound assumption that in every opinion lies the potentiality for overt action—that is really the dynamic aspect of opinion—he could comfortably anticipate the act he wishes once the individual has accepted the opinion he offers him. Thus new difficulties now beset the propagandist, difficulties that

The

Channeling

of Action

177

arise both from the very nature of the opinion process itself and the social conditions that may be influencing the process at the time. Consider the group-less person. Since he is detached from his loyalties, and his value-system is shattered, his behavior mechanism is hopelessly crippled; in fact, inactivated. For he has been deprived of the standards that may enable him to reach a value-judgment, or to hold on to one if offered to him. He has lost the sense of all meaning, and his mind has come to a standstill, incapable of supplying any direction to either choice or overt action. In a true sense, he has been brutalized, for all the inner controls of conduct have been paralyzed. The

opinion process in such a person is obviously also paralyzed and inactivated; it has been actually dissolved. It would be a fruitless effort, therefore, to try to graft prefabricated opinions onto a mind that has ceased to function normally. The behavior of such a person, as indicated earlier, can only be controlled and directed by the application of external pressure, chiefly by a play on his instincts. Direct manipulation of the opinion process is practically impossible in his case. A

somewhat

similar

difficulty,

though

for different

reasons,

con-

fronts the propagandist in any attempt to influence the opinion process of the fanatic. Unlike the completely dissociated person, the fanatic’s behavior mechanism is not disintegrated; on the contrary, it is so neatly and tightly organized and frozen by his total surrender to some leader, party, or absolute ideology, that any initiative on his part to face the facts in a situation and try to reach a private decision becomes highly problematical. His mind, too, comes to a standstill, is sealed, and his behavior is no longer determined by a conscious intelligent effort to arrive at a tenable appraisal of an issue. Ideas that may reach him cease to function as creative agents aiding him in defining and evaluating the issue before him. They may only serve, if relevant, as mechanical stimuli evoking responses consonant with his convictions. The fanatic has also lost the capability to formulate his own opinions, and thereby has become immune to any effort to mold them. The reader may recall the behavior of the German airmen held prisoners in England. Such persons are indeed wholly inaccessible to alien propagandists. Their own propagandists would probably consider any effort invested in manipulation at that level—the opinion level—as somewhat superfluous. And so it is. The fanatic has been divested of all controls over behavior pertinent to the propagandist’s interest, such controls having been placed in the hands of those the propagandist

178

Propaganda

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of Age

serves. The desired action may be procured from him by other means, usually by direct command. The cases just cited are, of course, extreme cases; but they do define the limits beyond which direct interference with the opinion process is not feasible. The individual who has reached those limits psychically is, as has been noted, immune to such manipulation. It is the individual who has not been deprived of the opportunity to make up his own mind, who feels free to exercise his judgment as to what political ideology to accept, what religious doctrine to believe, what commodity to buy and where, and, in general, what life to lead; it is this individual who

is

most susceptible to such manipulation. In him the opinion process is active, not dormant; in fact, it is the dynamic agent of his behavior and serves as the chief instrument of adaptation. It is this person then—the average man in a free, democratic society—that normally is exposed to all the pitfalls and traps that a propagandist may set in his path; or, to change the metaphor, the lures that beckon him to swallow the hook—the ready-made opinion—a propagandist may cast his way. The circumstances that may expose this person to all such risks, or that may invite the propagandist to play this game, are indeed many in our complex, fast-changing world. The situation calling for a decision and some action may be a new one and the individual may feel inadequately prepared; he may not have been supplied beforehand with sufficient conscious and unconscious cues. Or, it may be an old one—a periodic election, for instance—repeating itself in a different form and with some novel features. Here, the individual may find himself equally indecisive. In either case he would be most eager to listen to other men’s opinions; and his predicament opens the way for the propagandist to intervene. And intervene he does. In view of the urgency for action the propagandist is now forced to forego all attempts at the slow and indirect manipulation of the thoughts and feelings of the individual and proceed instead to influence directly the individual’s effort to arrive at an appraisal, hoping to bend the latter’s mind in the desired direction by imposing upon him the “right” opinions. The planting of such opinions in the mind of the person bent on reaching his own conclusions is the propagandist’s main task in opinion manipulation. As a task, it is not much different from the one the propagandist faces in attempting to fill the mind with distorted information, or knowledge. Instead of the latter, he is now attempting to graft onto the mind distorted and slanted judgments on concrete situa-

WHY 1 JOINED THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY Some dey, when people ore eble tolook efthen- on the eve ofthecentennial oftheree of*hran® thot tre naine ofLinceln be purged from party roles Aetrex dispenionately, perhaps the hue history of theectval revokution ser nothing more than @ push—‘ondhistory forelltime. These times conbetold. Howerer, until thotdoythe over. There wasn't even a fight) thetoldiers ofthe How doce at!ofthis apply totheeventual toke= word will olwoys meed henes!, stout-heerted men Rapublic hod been seeped inpropogande fromtheir over of America? (Note; Nt hosbeen sold thotAx teInterpret thetimes correctly. Hence, | hove tok- Lown watedepartment. Americans! Heed thewarming! mericoixover SO% controlled etthe present. | on it upon myself tohoythe WORD onwyfriends ond With the Bolsheviksolreedy active In 1817, sev~ know better. Comsymp: moke stotements like rho neighbor in the hoper thet they will consequently wnicen cells were immediotely dispatched toAmer~ tolull theeverage guy whe Ih toobusy making on be able tosee, ond oldmeinthe good fight! foo, where ome ofthem joined the march ofthepi- honest living to study the motter. Thefoct ia thot if bay interest in political octivity started some yeen omeers to Control Illinois. (Abo their activities 4 more neoriy romathing like 96%. Put THAT in age when |wor will in college. AYthet time |wes in the G.A.R., more borer.) Ht is enough now Io ovr pipe.) with0faut crowd. You know, freathinken, perverts, mention thot epproximotely 55% ofthesorly sett Simple orthmetic would show onyone caring = sepe-fiendh. | won eventuolly sickened byallthis len corried RED bandanas next tothele heorts! bout the motier thot the communists hove In fact Fimipetion ondlater found myself in2greot state of 1 thovld like to osk of this point if ever, of o ALREADY TAKEN OVER THE WORLDI We muir

Berchologice - philosophice ~ economico-ralighco- wrall child on the form, you sttended o barn-rai

Fight hardee thon ever! How is the final capitvio=

wmetebolico- politico deprenion. In my dorkes! mo- ing? This [so communal effort. Hove youpoitoned lation of America going tocome obaut? By the fol= rent I wenfound ondbedtolight byo member ofthe the social thinking ofyour children bytaking them Jowing method, myFriend: Birch Society. 1 vowed from thet mement | would te potluck supper? Thiskind ofcommunis! troining A. The communists in the Kromlin hove worked serve only the Society, end no ether folie gods. in shore-ond-share-ol iketheories have 10 weokened ou @ master plonintrode for thehest-ban treatys 1 hater discovered thotaryFormer friends (now aryour morol Fiber thot ovrmotion may 2000 fall] Our one outofevery thres ponions elected te public of= derecten end teunten) were sctvolly ellaportofsecret Hp, from sources toohigh teidentify, lethat fice will becommunist. the vou!, dreed communist conspirecy that hor come the take-over will beoccomplished bydoping the 3, There will be onend to the ol!depletion ol within sight of grondme’s proven of toking ever the potote selod with tnth serum, sa thot all who ot lewance, the mainstay of American economic tite cacrtry (18ineKener fact thetthecommunists boar Yond potluck supper will feel urged torie ond eqoicat the tide ofcommunis. nathing. They oreeudocity imcersonetized.) confem their “bine” aqoins the Almighty Sote. Then 1. Teachers will be forced 10recite pomages from “Moderation in the pursuit With these foch Ihme © challenge foal! Ame the local Commiuer will tein the ersleved ond the tscomes works of Mork to reploce schoo Teens. Crew out of your airconditioned bomb shel Nerrorized picnicert to munch their fried chickenla of ANYTHING Is no virtue!” ters ond Fight! Smosh yourshores ofconned water ond unison while humming the internationale . Maly 2. edenomwill be ploced ta elf public wet= cookies! Moke your ection ierevenible! The lien J wouldlike topoint outtoyouthet auch ofthe BF treotment plants to soften ows brolna and dam= $We now hove good reas to beltove that Orwald who wrote ou American history hove 20 conksed tien Bolshevik: woy oflife which hesbeen forced 290 our doudenums. is ollve in Angola troining inturgents with ow hae ye thotwe dove! ifyouundertiond balifofwhet youon wt her come obout through our Idolotry of a BIUIA total ikzeaichoren taioetpasvenger orecd money. Justice Worren, of courte, is using oll hid peed. (Even WE ore sometimes confused!) Youmow popdcr Republican president who em really & service which will leod us to total choos. might to hide this stortling foct in order to frowe Fihaly ove will under the imoression rhot full-page concious, dediceted agentoftheCommunist Cone ©. The mau release ofhardened criminals from Sock Ruby.) These mighty truths ore hidden from the this were probably poid for bykooks ond spirocy forall of his edvlt life. This mon con be ‘eur model prisons; allofwhom will Immediately public even with the Birchers, Aso rewit, | hover when really | (ond the other five fellows proved tobeo communist becouse he enocioted ge! fobs in the chyil rights movement. broken with my onatime mantor ond ‘1a nd @path Tn phe colhor with me) ore the only real patriots Left wlth people who mere communists becouse they ox &, The raising of form parity laws to the polnt of Truth and Goodness ond Right Not it unporol= Ino country which hasdelfted 20forleftit moysoon secioted with ether individvals ampected of left where oll formers will 90 longer work otoll. led. (It should be reolized by oll my reoders thar ddroo olf the edge of the world.(Itisn’? odvised to be beonings . « Thegrodvol tokaoverofthe U.S. by the presidential hopeful forthe Reoublicons is drag~ foo hesty ebout accepting thot whvenive foreign This president posed ai0 grect worleader when, the communist-dominated F.8.1. ging the Birchers through themud ofmoderately doctrine phat seys the world it round. All the srotis~ ot we oll know, he never fired o mochine gun ia Sub Sub2. Hollywood's recent onnounce which Is only @ step from socioliim; ond who it w= thesaren't inyet) his life. (On the controry he left the nation wore mont thot they will moke a wper spectocul~ awore of THAT hidden dragon in our society?) 4 ony A mojor tymptom ofthecommunist disease Itthot tom and seddled with on Intolerable debt that would erscope production of “The Life and Hord calling on oll you right-thinking Americans to Join. we donot recognize troltons when we see then, hove andeved the notion onthe spotifit were not Times of Korl Morn, in color, starring Tony with me! Have you trulyvirtue ond undouated cour when cchvolly weore uerraumded ond neorly romped for our mupers morality ot the time.) He also cloimed Perkins ond Ma Kettle. 29€7 Con you unglue yourselves from the Red Men= by treeson! tremon! eoronesronecion sonsonson! My 10 hove given civil rights to the Negroes ond he Glub. Personal attocks on me ond my or- ace of Teves? Ave you truly Independent ond aw friendal Doyou know thot many ofthe“greot Amer- ven went20forcitewisfederal troops to enforce gonizotion whichwill leod to universal con- wore of the grave iswes? Con you breok inte houses, lear” whom we edmise were really infiltroton sent his Interrectol designs intheSouth. Ieitnecessary flogration and apoplexy when your chief demands i1? Con you craw! on your by the Kremlin! The encemity of the thought! The fepoint outthot oll themembers ofhis ownfamily All ofthe obove focts have ledmetothecan- belly Itke 0 reptile? Con you snatch purses in the. control exerted byourLiberal, Socialist, Commun= were while? clusion thotollof cur existlag organizations ore not deferme of Freedom? If you hove these rore, oll= Tatmovers isbowed on the lie thot theRussian Re~ We refer, naturally, to that alien toitor, Ab- “extreme” enough in the defense of our precious Americon quolitier, than you con be odmitied to yolvtion took place In 1917. The FACTS ore quite rohom Lincoln! (Few historions reolize theZionis: Liberties. This hosledme to even doubt the veracity the ranks of the New Orgonizotion of the Righty Eillerent. It rectly hoppened one hundred yeors ear implications ofhitchoice of@ Fiat none.) There ‘of the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society FFF Focts For Freedom Foundation! Vier, in 1817, but its existence won the best-kept hove been thous brave fewrecently who have tried Join with me! Send your dimet end dollars {estate (Jeybeez) have, through the agency of the mogsecret of thet century. hvon the Terrible wos really fo “reod Abe Lincoln outof theRepublicon Party”. azine, “Amaricon Opinion” published article: on management service offered free of charge) today I reamed Lorry lvonevitch Gilhrossenki, ond his pe Htwos tobe expected thot they would moet with lefties such os that infomous Martin Luther King, Since 1963, 99.44% of Americans hove been in secution ond mutilation of the siorving Russion peas- mony © stiff orm ond upper lip, which ix exoctly Je. (We hod © photograph of him preaching to 0 alterobly contaminated. Needless, this has ham eniry01 simply 0 deceptive technique which proves shot hos come bow. Even the present leoders ofgroupofPeace Corps youth tome yeort ago. Among strung the House Unomericon A\ Come he wornothing more thon © tooloftheclass revoly- the party orehesitont obout thisimportant point. It their ranks oppeored none other than Lee Horvey mittee investigotive efforts. This sitvation shall beYon. Throughout hit reign the slow, imidious infil- thows grove wecknesse: ond pink concessionon Orwold! However, this veluoble document wor remedied! Our Motto: An Investigator for Every Yretion of top goverment positions tock ploce until Yheie port, As | hove demonstrated, it is essential filched from us by 0 Horvord-educated CIA ogsint.)Toxpoyert

DO YOU WANT MORE? © Mare financial supp forknows Commnalees mach at Frasca, Selmar an! Chiaag-Kai-Cnes? More 1cCourtdnciahems shatgivemaneyout ta ree downtown, creatcide Chicago aces han fe20 acres ofvinmons, rachcemeval [iinet farm hae? More Amorsey Casemls who lone = thelr owebecthes and fares hetehel voting sighe = hippy, baryomrameie’, canine woe Takoma? More Seaue Onparemest planttoabolish ourwok

| _______ MAM ORDER COUPON MAIL ORDER COUPON oscow, | |FACTS FOR FREEDOM FOUNDATION IDAHO oT

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MOSCOW, IDAHO

THIS PRESENTATION

? ips hy WTFEYL Poor? 3) Doyou have aceed 4) Who can delet America om (everishty than rrentt 3) Without FFF) All U tenit (Wetre in Jeb¢ up4 our ean for WW II beoma shire from, Ragentins.) 6) What isyour Income bracket? 7) Tawological, See quenion # 1it to tee the concr deugstone, Conk,

1SThe scoonat ABCs of Winning Debates ofhemacho’ many eocomusr, bothpublic audprtram, with BY DR. WM,

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WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE GENEROSITY AND SMPLEMINDEDNESS OF THE EDITOR,

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AND FORGOT TO PROOFREAD THIS PAGEL

This appeared

Illinois) on Sept. 10, 1964.

1g)

IDAHO

Robert Belch, President

OFFICE UNLOCKED

Use of ridicule to discredit a political opponent. the Prairie Post (Maroa,

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Propaganda

180

Comes

of Age

tions to which the individual must respond. It is this fact—that the individual must now act—that introduces into this task the new element that the propagandist must face and overcome. The propagandist’s prospective victim is not now simply a seeker after some truth or information; his interest is not purely an intellectual one. Facing a concrete problem presented to him by the shifting conditions of life, he must now marshal all those conscious and unconscious cues which are relevant to that particular problem and make a choice as to the proper way of responding. It is characteristic

of this individual

(the citizen

in a democratic

society) that in handling such contingencies he has been accustomed to believe that only he, and he alone, should be the sole arbiter as to

what course his actions should take. The democratic society fosters such an attitude through its demand that its citizen be a self-reliant, intelligent, and discriminating person, and places all responsibility for his actions squarely upon his shoulders. The freedoms that it grants to this citizen are all presumed to aid him in meeting this demand. He is given free access to all channels of information just for that purpose, and is expected to utilize them in that manner. His then is the choice and the responsibility. It is this unyielding stand that the democratic citizen is expected to, and may, take under such conditions that the propagandist must deal with now. To the extent that the average person within such a society has developed the qualities of independence of judgment, and an intelligent, critical approach to the issues calling for action, to that extent is the propagandist’s task of influencing these judgments difficult. A person with an attitude “I know best,” or, “show me,” a person whose

alert

and critical mind is continuously nourished with accurate information from impartial sources, and, unwittingly of course, constantly sharpened by the conflicting counter-claims of competing propagandists, is not likely to accept readily and without scrutiny opinions offered to him by others. Furthermore, making matters worse for the propagandist is the fact that his opinions cannot withstand much scrutiny. They are of necessity false; specious at least, if not spurious. How does the propagandist handle such a problem? Obviously he cannot challenge the individual’s right to “draw his own conclusions.” A frontal attack against that claim will in effect be disastrous. He can, however, exploit it for his own purpose—a fact not at all inconsistent with the propagandist’s main objective of making the individual believe that he acts of his own volition (the principle of illusion). And that

The Channeling

of Action

181

is precisely what he does. Under the pretense of respecting the individual’s right to think for himself—and sometimes even in the name of it as some of our advertisements reveal—he dangles before the individual all his tailor-made opinions, cloaking them in the respectable garments of prestige, authority, and tradition, or attaching to them whatever inducements he may think would make their acceptance irresistible. Who can resist the force behind the opinion of a “doctor” and any other “scientific” source, or that of a prominent personality? The pleasantry of a well-told joke which may, however, contain within it some pungent characterization of a person of another race, religion, or nationality? The charm of a fable or an anecdote which too may do likewise? Who can detect all the irrelevancies and the nonsequiturs behind the pronouncements of a “responsible” editor, or the exhortations of a “patriotic” politician? And what if the appeal is made personally to you, a man

of “dignity,” “respect,” “position,” a worthy citizen?

Such are the vehicles that carry the pre-conceived opinions of the propagandist to the individual in the hope that they may somehow enter into his thinking process and emerge at the right time as judgments of his own making. Take the case of national health insurance as presented to the American citizen by two rival groups. Typical of the presentation by the American Medical Association is an attractively printed folder with the well-known painting of “The Doctor” by Sir Luke Fildes on the cover, soliciting the support of the citizen. Under the caption: “Your Medical Program’ with the subheading “COMPULSORY? or VOLUNTARY?” the citizen is asked a series of questions and also given a double answer, one under the heading “Compulsory” and the other under “Voluntary.” Leaving out questions such as “What is the cost?”, “Can we afford it?”, “What are the benefits?”, to which appropriate answers are also given, we read, for example: Wuat

Is IT?

COMPULSORY

VOLUNTARY

Health Insurance is Compulsory politically-controlled medicine, proposed by the Federal Security Agency. It is not ‘insurance, by any torture of words or stretch of the imagination!

Voluntary Health Insurance is the protection offered now, all over America, by sound, pre-paid health plans. They provide the finest hospital, surgical and medical care in the world —on a budget basis.

Propaganda

182 Wuo

Pays

FoR

Comes

of Age

IT?

VOLUNTARY

COMPULSORY You service

Every wage earner and _ self-employed person pays whether he wants the service or not.

Free choice in buying clothes or cars or life insurance or health insurance is as American as apple pie.

Millions will pay—whose religious faith or principles prohibit participation. Is Ir GooD

pay—only if you want the and think the price is right.

FOR

AMERICA?

COMPULSORY

VOLUNTARY

In every great Nation which has tried Government-controlled medicine

American medicine leads the entire world. It has helped make America

—Germany, Russia, France, England —the result has been: Second-rate medical care Decline of medical education and research

the

Invasion of the patient’s personal privacy Political control substituted for medical direction A new hierarchy of Government administrators Constantly mounting tax burdens Extension of controls over other professions

healthiest,

strongest,

best

cared

for Nation on earth. It furnishes daily proof that there is no need to import the Socialist medical systems of a sick harassed Europe to a strong, healthy America.

The scientific advances of American medicine in conquering disease and extending life are recognized as foremost in the world. The average

American’s

life

span

is

19

years

longer today than in 1900!

What is particularly noticeable here—besides the use of the familydoctor symbol to set the reader in the proper mood and the reduction of the whole issue to the personal level by the use of the pronoun “Your” in the caption to capture and hold his interest—is the meticulous care with which this propagandist works on the reader’s feelings. fivery opinion he presents that is favorable to his interests is diligently designed to fit into his value system; it is carefully dipped into what he conceives to be the average American’s sentimental make-up. Conversely, opinions contrary to his interests are just as solidly embeded in values foreign to the American tradition, in fact, antagonistic to it. The propagandist has already done the thinking for the reader: he has marshaled all his thoughts and feelings for him, all his likes and dislikes, and practically forces him to accept the one overall, and inescapable, conclusion: This plan is not for me. To make sure that he not only

The Channeling

of Action

183

reaches that conclusion but holds on to it with conviction, he informs

him of the kind of groups that have been supporting such a plan as well as those that have been opposing it. He confronts the reader with a final question: “Where Do Thinking Americans Stand?” Under the heading “Compulsory” are listed the Federal Security Agency, the American Association of Social Workers, and several reputable organizations. Then follows this list: Communist All who Left-wing

party.

seriously believe organizations

in a Socialist

State.

generally.

Two specially-organized propaganda groups—the Committee for the Nation’s Health and the Physicians Forum—whose prime concern is campaigning for Compulsory Health Insurance. Some AFL and CIO leaders, though Labor is divided on this issue. (Most rankand-file union men and women are strongly opposed to more payroll deductions.)

Some well-intentioned but misinformed, people who have been led by the proponents’ misuse of facts, to believe that Government control will solve all the country’s health needs.

Under

the

column

marked

“Voluntary,”

on

the

other

hand,

are

found such paragons of respectability as General Federation of Women’s Clubs,

the American

Legion,

American

Bar

Association,

and

many

other industrial and religious national organizations. The list is followed by the statement: “Thousands of other organizations interested in public welfare—not politics.” A veritable megaton of prestige, one might say, sufficient indeed to tip the scales on the side of the propagandist’s view, and to pull the average man away from the center of his logical gravity. Consider the manner in which the CIO presented the same issue to the same average man. In a quarter-page advertisement appearing in a number of leading newspapers this organization attempts to tip the scales, and does, in the opposite direction. The technique used is the same, the weights different. The whole argument here revolves not around general abstractions such as freedom and dictatorship but the plight of a particular person, the American mother. The appeal itself is also personalized as the text in the advertisement is written in the form of a letter from this American mother ostensibly to her doctor, but intended, of course, to be read by the average citizen. More than a third of the space is taken up by the picture of a bedroom with a

Propaganda

184

Comes

of Age

young boy lying in bed presumably ill, and the mother, pen in hand and in a sad and thoughtful pose, apparently composing the letter. Significantly, there is no doctor in the scene depicted by the picture. The mother here is facing a problem and is left to face it alone. In the AMA’s picture the whole scene seems to be’ riveted on the doctot’s presence. Every detail appears to acquire a meaning from that intense concentration that the artist succeeded in putting into the doctor’s face and posture. Here, the mother is alone, and needs help. Her predicament is made more explicit in the letter which reads as follows: Dear

Doctor,

I’ve got a right to cry out against the American Medical Association. [ve got a mother’s right to cry out for the health of my child and the children of every mother in America. I’ve got a citizen’s right to cry out for National Health Insurance—the only hope for the health of millions of Americans. You know that the American Medical Association is spending a million dollars right now in an advertising campaign to fight against a national health program. The American Medical Association is doing it with your money and the money of other doctors like you. Why is it worth millions of dollars to them to keep this necessary medical care from the American people? Doctor, I don’t have a million dollars to fight back. You know only too well that sometimes I haven’t the few dollars to pay your bill. But I know that you personally have human feelings. And I know that you must feel ashamed, deep down in your heart, of the war against National Health Insurance waged by the American Medical Association. A.M.A. propaganda cries that National Health Insurance will reduce the quality of medical treatment, regiment doctors and patients, socialize medicine, and destroy professional freedom, private initiative, free enterprise. I just don’t believe it. The same kind of argument was used against every forward step our country ever made to benefit the great majority of Americans.

This is followed by a list of movements that the AMA had allegedly opposed in the past such as “vaccination against diphtheria and other contagious diseases by public health authorities,” “group medical practice,” and so on. Then comes the concluding statement: Doctor,

my

for it when

family we

are

needs best

insurance costs too much

more

able

and

to pay

better for

medical

care.

it, in advance.

and doesn’t go far enough.

We

want

to pay

“Voluntary”

health

It pays only 35%

of the

average family’s medicine bill. A National Health Insurance Fund—built up through payroll contributions by employee and employer—will spread and space the costs, pay for medical care out of earnings. That is not charity. It is not socialism. It is insurance... .

The Channeling

of Action

185

The cost of modern medical care is too high for anyone except the wealthy. And so the people want to pool their resources to meet a common risk. Would you personally deny us that opportunity? I am pleading with you, Doctor, to join on my side—on our side—on the side of the people!

As against the AMA evaluation of the plan in terms of broad political and economic doctrines, the labor group presents an appraisal in terms of the needs of the “American mother” and the “people.” The AMA hides behind the former; the CIO, behind the latter. Both presentations, however,

are characterized by a paucity of factual evidence,

and an overabundance of ready-to-serve opinion garnished with symbols to make it palatable. This is the chief characteristic of material issued by the propagandist in attempting to mold opinion. The individual is still offered a choice; in fact, several choices. First, he may choose between the two alternatives offered to him by one propagandist; or, between several such alternatives if exposed to the pleas of competing propagandists. What is of significance is the fact that the individual, deprived of an adequate factual basis, cannot exercise his rational, critical faculties in making that choice; he must perforce fall back on

his own biases and prejudices. These become his criteria and the active agents of selection; for these are the mental factors that the propagandist brings into play when he compels a person to consider an issue and his proffered opinion in terms of some meaningful symbol rather than the pertinent evidence. It is this aim of the propagandist to persuade the individual to choose the “right” opinion on emotional rather than rational grounds that compels him to resort to the either/or technique of presentation— the black/white formula. The issue is presented in terms of clear-cut, sharply contrasted, and absolute conclusions allowing the individual no middle ground on which to stand but only the opportunity to choose between the value-judgments of the two sides. Each propagandist presents his case as absolutely sound (all white); his opponent’s as absolutely wrong (all black). In so doing, he greatly facilitates the task of the average man to arrive at an estimate of an issue—he can dispense with all the laborious effort that a critical consideration of the issue may require and merely accept the opinion that happens to coincide with his own predilections. This saves time; it also protects the propagandist against his being dragged into an argument at the intellectual level, and held there, if the question of the relevancy or validity of factual data were raised. “Don’t Argue” is a cardinal maxim of propagandistic action; it is violated only under unusual circumstances, as,

186

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

for instance, when the immediate objective of the propagandist is to create confusion. This either/or pattern of presenting an issue enables the propagandist to reduce it to two seemingly irreconcilable versions giving to each its appropriate friendly or unfriendly emotional valence. By this simplification of the issue to two contradictory alternatives he can then forestall any further questioning and discussion of relevant facts and feel free to concentrate on regulating the amount of pressure that he may exert upon the individual to accept his version. He may offer it simply as guidance coming from a friendly source; or as advice to be followed in the interest of common values and purposes. He may increase the pressure behind it and present it in the form of an exhortation, making the issue appear of vital importance to the individual. Finally, he may, if conditions warrant it, relinquish all such mild means of persuasion and resort to harsher measures—coming close to the edge of coercive promotion—such as a demand that the individual take a definite stand on the issue and be prepared to act accordingly. At this point, he may not be reluctant to reinforce that demand with threats of probable calamitous consequences if the individual remained intractable. Such are the ramifications and the potentialities of this technique. That the AMA and the CIO releases reflect this dualistic pattern has already been indicated. They may be examined a little further, however. Take the AMA’s interpretation again. What one is in essence being told is that, either one accepts their assessment of the National Health Insurance plan as something dangerous to the American system, or one is in favor of “Socialized Medicine” and all that it implies. Similarly, according to the CIO’s version, either one sees health insurance as a great boon to America, or he has no feeling for the plight of the “American Mother,” and the “people.” The average man is afforded little opportunity to consider the issue critically and on its own merits; nor is he offered a chance to take an intermediate, neutral

position. The issue is vital; he must make a choice. And he must choose between the alternative versions put before him by these two groups. For, the average man has neither the time nor the opportunity and inclination to take advantage of the impartial sources of information that may be available to him and, gathering an adequate body of factual information, make a decision of his own. It is precisely this handicap in the average man’s situation that the propagandist attempts to exploit in such circumstances. It compels the average

The Channeling

of Action

187

man to limit his choice to the versions offered to him and, in making it, to rely on an emotional rather than a rational basis. He must choose for another reason. By presenting the issue to him in the form they do, these two groups stir up within him an emotional conflict which he must resolve to regain his mental tranquility. The average American citizen would be inclined to support both the American ideals and the interests of the American people. The choice that these propagandists are trying to force upon him could be justified only in terms of the one and not the other. In his own mind the two are not irreconcileable; but in trying to make that choice he is compelled to view the two as contradictory and mutually exclusive. It is this painful dualism of feelings that he must terminate. He cannot eradicate it completely, of course, once it has been fixed in his mind;

but he can reduce the torment that it is creating in him by accepting one or the other of the two versions offered. This too then works to the advantage of the propagandist. But which version should he choose? It is at this point that the propagandist’s previous manipulation of the emotions, especially the forging of the links of identification, is likely to be rewarded and bear fruit.

For the individual’s decision based, as it must be, on emotional

preferences will be determined largely by the relative strength of his feeling of identification with either of the competing groups. That is the factor that basically controls the weight the individual may assign to the various symbols brought into play by the propagandists. Loyalty and allegiance to the political and social entities conjured up by these symbols are elastic qualities varying in strength in proportion to the closeness or remoteness of the individual’s group to those entities. He would, in this particular instance, strongly prefer to view the plan in terms of its relationship to the American ideals had he previously identified himself with the AMA group; or in terms of its bearing on the interests of the people had he similarly made such an identification with the CIO. It may be noted that though the individual’s inner conflict may be resolved and this particular issue may cease disturbing him for the time being once he has made a choice, the clash between two compatible sets of symbols introduced by this form of presentation will remain in his consciousness to some extent from the moment he accepts one or the other of the two versions. That is the scar that the use of propaganda as an instrument of resolving social issues is likely

Propaganda

188

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to inflict upon the mental tissue of the average man, a problem to which we shall return. This either/or technique (a sort of “you’re either with us or against us” position) is more sharply and wividly portrayed in the following example taken from the publicity of our two political parties during the national elections of 1936. The issue in this instance is the candidacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a pocket-size, pink, folding pamphlet the Republican Party explained to the voter why he should not favor such a candidacy. The argument ran as follows. First, this general statement on the front page: Your

Personal

Liberty

and

Constitutional Rights As a Free Citizen

ARE IN DANGER WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Then came a brief discussion of the Constitution

and its meaning

in relation to the rights of the people; followed in turn by the statement that legislation pushed by Roosevelt had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The citizen then was addressed personally: YOU

KNOW

That practically all of these unconstitutional laws were written for Congress by the Roosevelt Brain Trust. It is no secret. The Brain Trusters have boasted about writing them.

YOU

KNOW

That most of these laws were sent to Congress by the President himself as “Must” legislation and all of them were approved and signed by him—even though The President Admitted Were

He Knew

They

Unconstitutional

Is he not, then, knowingly trying to evade, undermine, and ultimately overrule the Constitution and to wrest from the people their individual rights?

Near the end of the pamphlet the voter is practically seized by the sleeve, and asked to:

ees

HERE'S THE DOUBLE-TALK YOU GET FROM THE G0? ote

Ja the North, the GOP “Talks Tough” on Civil Rights: “President Eisenhower's Republican Administration has registered the greatest advance for the rights of racial minorities since the Emancipation Proclamation ... . Speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court, a great Republican Chief Justice, Earl Warren, has ordered an end to racial segregation in the nation's schools.” —Vice President Nixon, New York, Feb, 13, 1956.

« «.- But In the South, the GOP Is “Moderate” on Civil Rights: Charies K. McWhorter of New York, Young Republican National Chairman, speaking in Jackson, Miss., cited the Republican record as that of “a conservative party, moderate on ‘civil rights’” . . . and went on to say that this “best suits the interest of Mississippians."—Jackson (Miss.) States-Times, May 25, 1956.

seme

()MPARE THE RECORDS — AND MAKE YOUR CHOICE Miss Leila Villoda Daniel K. Inouye (D.) .......405 Jack Teehan

OKLA.

A. S. Mike Monroney (D.) ...... Mrs. Beth Short

Frank Church (D.) ..........-- Porter Ward len B. Jordan (R.) ..-.eeeerees Mrs. Jody Baldwin

ORE.

Wayne Morse (D.) .....-....... Miss Phyllis Rock Maurine B. Neuberger (D.) ..... Uoyd Tupling

Poul H. Douglas (D.) ..-....... Howard E. Shuman Everett M. Dirksen (R) .......-- John Gomien

PENN.

Joseph S. Clark (D.) -

Bernard E. Norwitch

Hugh Scott (R.)

Eugene S. Cowen

Vance

RA.

John O. Pastore (D.) ......---++ C. J. Maisano

Hartke

(D.)

J. Howard

...-....-.0 John Munger

Birch Bayh (D.) .....----e sees Poul Danaceav

Bourke B. Hickenlooper (R.) ....Dan O’Brien

James

Carlson

(R.) .. B. Pearson (R.) .

B. Morton

Clolborne Pell (D.) ...

Raymond N. Nelson

Strom Thurmond

(D.) .......... Harry S. Dent

. Miss Betty Rosness

Karl E. Mundt (R.) ..........-6 Walter Conahan

..Joe McConkey

George McGovern

John S. Cooper (R.) ....24.-6- Geoffrey Drummond Thruston

(D.) ..... John Meek

Olin D. Johnston (D.) ........-- Thomas W. Chadwick

Jack Miller (R) ..........- ¢.+eAndrew Montgomery Frank

Edmondson

(D.

Albert Gore (D.)

Herbert S. Walters

(R.) .-.--.6- Stephen Lord

. . George Cunninghom Jack W. Robinson

(D.) ........ Frank Brizzi

Russell B, Long (D.) ..........- William E. Leonard

Ralph W. Yarborough (D.) ..... Loule E. Mathis John G, Tower (R) vseecseccees R. Ken Towery

Margaret C. Smith (R.) ..,....-+ Bill Lewis Edmund S, Muskie (D.) ....-.-.. Chapman Stockford

Wallace F. Bennett (R.) .....-.- Tom Korologos | Frank E. Moss (D.) ........-... Grant W. Midgley

3. Glenn Beall (R) .-...--. eens Ben Whitehurst Daniel B. Brewster {D.) .....-.+ William Townsend

Winston

Allen J. Ellender (D.) .........- C. B. Morrison

George D. Aiken (R.) .........- Charles Weaver

Pot McNamora

Eugene J. McCarthy

(R.) .......-+ Tom Hayes

A. Willis Robertson

(D.) ........ William Foster

Warren G. Mognuson (D.) ...... Carl Downing Henry M. Jackson (D.) ......-.. Brian Corcoran

(D.) ......-.-+- Edwin N. Winge

Philip A. Hart (D.) ......-..-4. Jerry Kabel Hubert H. Humphrey (D.)

L. Prouty

Harry Flood Byrd (D.) ......... J, Heywood Bell

Leverett Soltonstall (R.) .....-.- Charles Clopp Edward M. Kennedy (D.) ...-..- Jeremiah Marth

Jennings Randolph (D.) .....-.- James W. Harris Robert C. Byrd (D.) .....-.--.- lovis 1. Freed

Winthrop G. Griffith

(D.) ......- Jerry Eller

Jomes O. Eastland (D.) ........ Courtney Pace

William Proxmire (D.)

Stuart Symington

Gale W. McGee (D.) .....-..655 Tom Wilson Milward L, Simpson (R.) ......+ Doug Baldwin

Gaylord Neleon\(D3)) 44

John Stennis (D.) ....--.00000+ Phil Stroupe

(D.) .......-- Fred McGhee

Edward V. Long (D.) ...-..++ +Charles Hughes

Like the executive

branch, legislators also have press linking them with the public.

283

«Roy Moor

..-William Bechtel

284.

Propaganda

Comes

of Age

intensively trained in the broad spectrum of arts, skills and knowledge required for effective operational activity in the global conflict between freedom and totalitarian communism” is a step in the right direction that should have been taken a long time ago.” Contemporary propaganda warfare is not an amateur’s game. Further, to guard against the possibility that those in the government may decide to turn propaganda upon their own people, a second principle must be established, that all governmental propaganda be directed only against the enemy—a condition, incidentally, which prevails with respect to military activity, and one that was imposed upon and scrupulously followed by the Office of Strategic Services in the last war. If such a condition were made patently clear, there may be a stop to the sporadic attempts to manipulate the public, or to withhold information from it, made at present by various officials. In his recent book, The Right to Know, Kent Cooper introduces his

concluding chapter with these words: “There is ultimately more for this nation to fear from lack of internal loyalty because of suppression of news than from external efforts by others to discredit it abroad. If the government of the United States cannot maintain a wholesome partnership with the people of the United States by trusting them with full information to which they feel they are entitled, then the people will not trust their government, and they should not.” * The distinction, thus, between enlightening and manipulating the public will have been made clearer, though the problem of how much the people could be told on given matters will still remain. But this too may be mitigated were a policy, knowledge available to the enemy should not be withheld from the people, to be pursued.

This is the procedure that a successful defense of our democratic state against outsiders practically requires us to follow. A somewhat different procedure, however, is indicated in fighting the battle of democracy domestically. Here the battle must be waged by the people themselves primarily, and only incidentally by their representatives, the government. It can be waged successfully again, if through the exercise of the power vested in the doctrine of popular sovereignty they undertook to mobilize and strengthen those forces actively engaged in checking anti-democratic tendencies. It is that doctrine that would deny the government the right to manipulate its people. In a positive manner, it would justify any demand

Propaganda

and The Democratic

Society

285

that the people may make upon their government to launch or extend current activities in defense of the democratic process. The public, for example, could press for effective legislation outlawing propagandistic practices—admittedly not a very promising prospect at the moment in view of the confusion about the nature of propaganda that still seems to prevail among the general public, our legislators, and our scientists. It can also support vigorously, and even push for an extension of governmental efforts to curb such practices whenever feasible. And there have been many such efforts recently. A good illustration would be the anti-lobby legislation. By weakening the direct pressure from special interest groups upon the representatives of the people these groups have been forced to resort to indirect pressures: to go to work on the constituents of congressmen back home. This, of course, is all to the good. The responsibility for keeping such work under control—government by pressure is not exactly what democracy postulates—is thus shifted to the people where it belongs. The people will sooner or later get to know such interests, an opportunity denied to them so long as such work was done behind the scenes. A case in point is one described in an article by Philip Dodd, entitled, “