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Arriving at this point, where
society agrees on the dangers of smoking occurred over 30 years
and required defeating a slick propaganda campaign designed to
distract, deny, confuse and assure. Persuasion utilized a
consistent, repetitive campaign of the same message, "Smoking
kills. People that smoke are killing themselves. To smoke is
bad for your health." These statements were substantiated by
scientific research, yet the Tobacco industry created its own
junk science to counter and continued to overwhelm the message
with irrelevant details and distraction. Though it took
30-years, persuasion eventually won. Truth always does.
Persuasion is rooted in truth; Propaganda is rooted in a
self-fulfilling agenda, junk science, distortions and
half-truths. The Tobacco war is a classic example of persuasion
ultimately overcoming propaganda.
Fundamental Distinctions
When a message addresses the
habit, issue or action, it is persuasion. When it attacks the
person, glorifies harmful behaviors or ideas, it is propaganda.
People who smoke are not bad. Smoking, the action is bad. When
movies portray only villains or downtrodden as smokers, while
the statistics for society do not mirror its characterization,
this is propaganda and falls under two strategies,
characterization and transfer.
Characterization illustrates the
most easily identified form of propaganda. When in response to
an argument a commentator refers to someone as "right-wing",
"liberal" or "fanatical", characterization manifests and
propaganda reveals itself. The commentator cannot argue the
point or based upon an agenda he may be aware of or not, he does
not want you to consider the other argument. Rather he chooses
to discredit the person or source material instead. Through
characterization, he discredits the argument for the majority of
those reading, listening or watching. The commentator, through
careful cultivation of image, negates others solely upon his
perceived expertise, warranted or not. Reputation creates a
comfort cell around those whom command and distribute popular
opinion. It doesn't mean the commentator is right; it only
means most fail to question. This acceptance leads one down the
path of least resistance and propaganda perpetuates.
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Characterization has a flip side
when it is used as packaging. Sometimes referred to as
advertising slogans, this type of characterization teeters on
the edge of persuasion. What defines propaganda is the facts.
A favorite example is the O'Reilly Factor's slogan, the "The No
Spin Zone". The irony to anyone watching with an understanding
of propaganda is that commentator Bill O'Reilly is a master at
characterization, filibustering and deflection. Brilliant in
his ability to use facial expressions, voice inflection and
verbal characterizations, he easily discredits people and
bolsters his followers. Occasionally his tactics deem
appropriate. Occasionally a few minutes of research exposes his
characterization as just that. Propaganda banks on the fact that
fewer than 10% of those watching, whom fundamentally agree with
the argument, will actually dig deeper. Characterization's
power breeds as viewers or readers proceed to compound its
stereotype through dissemination to others. In time, a
characterization once seen as racist or demeaning enters the
common consciousness as accepted and appropriate.
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propaganda's pendulum of
equality:
Propaganda distorts society's
illusion of reality to fulfill its purpose. At times it empowers
one segment of society with supernatural or God given rights,
placing one group of people within disdain as the Jews, mentally
ill, persons of color, homosexuals, communists, Catholics,
gypsies and handicapped in Nazi Germany faced. Propaganda plays
both sides and often elevates others to superhuman and righteous
status, as was the case in Germany with its aspirations of a
master Aryan race during the early parts of the last century,
and is the case in Israel present day. In both examples, a
group of people decides they are more deserving of life and
possibly endowed with extraordinary blessings, powers, superior
intellect or some other distinguishing factor. Concurrently they
must dehumanize and rid their world of persons differing or seen
as a threat. The differing are vilified, chastised and often
turned into the reason for the continued assault, a form of
self-justification for continued persecution as evident in Nazi
Europe and the Middle East today.
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"We have to control them because
they aren't (smart enough, righteous enough, strong enough…fill
in the blank) to take care of themselves.
Their (brain, upbringing,
culture…fill in the blank) is inferior to ours. How can
we be expected to live with these people?
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The
domination effect
Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, the US has
sought not just to influence but to control all
information, from friend and foe
David Miller
Thursday January 8, 2004
The Guardian
"Information dominance" came of age during the conflict
in Iraq. It is a little discussed but highly significant
part of the US government strategy of "full spectrum
dominance", integrating propaganda and news media into
the military command structure more fundamentally than
ever before.
In the
past, propaganda involved managing the media.
Information dominance, by contrast, sees little
distinction between command and control systems,
propaganda and journalism. They are all types of "weaponized
information" to be deployed. As strategic expert Colonel
Kenneth Allard noted, the 2003 attack on Iraq "will be
remembered as a conflict in which information fully took
its place as a weapon of war".
Nor is
information dominance something dreamt up by the Bush
White House. It is a mainstream US military doctrine
that is also embraced in the UK. According to US army
intelligence there are already 15 information dominance
centres in the US, Kuwait and Baghdad.
Both
the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office in this country have staff assigned to
"information oper-ations". In future conflicts,
according to the MoD, "maintaining morale as well as
information dominance will rank as important as physical
protection".
Achieving information dominance according to American
military experts, involves two com-ponents: first,
"building up and protecting friendly information; and
degrading information received by your adversary". Seen
in this context, embedding journalists in Iraq was a
clear means of building up "friendly" information. An
MoD-com-missioned commercial analysis of the print
output produced by embeds shows that 90% of their
reporting was either "positive or neutral".
The
second component is "the ability to deny, degrade,
destroy and/or effectively blind enemy capabilities".
"Unfriendly" infor-mation must be targeted. This is
perhaps best illustrated by the attack on Al-Jazeera's
office in Kabul in 2001, which the Pentagon justified by
claiming al-Qaida activity in the Al-Jazeera office. As
it turned out, this referred to broadcast interviews
with Taliban officials. The various attacks on Al-Jazeera
in Kabul, Basra and Baghdad should also be seen in this
context.
Full Article |
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They will contaminate our (race,
children, country…fill in the blank)"
REALITY CHECK--Consider this. If
some type of racial, ethnic, religious or cultural superiority
did exist, the United States could not exist. If one group of
people were incapable of living with another group of people,
the United States wouldn't exist.
Every race, culture, faith and
country has people in the United States. In each group, some are
successes and some are failures. In each group some are
righteous and law abiding and some are criminals. No
studies show any group superior to another. All studies
show is that each group has its own challenges and advantages.
For example, if you're white, you tend to get sunburned a lot
quicker than someone of color. Darker skin is an advantage
in a sunny climate. It is neither a disadvantage nor
advantage in an overcast climate. Does this mean to have
darker skin is to be racially superior? No, it just means
people of darker skin usually age better with fewer sun-caused
wrinkles and have fewer instances of skin cancer because they
don't spend time and money tanning!
Though claiming racial
superiority, faith superiority or any other elitism is easy to
spot, it is rarely recognized. Like a frog boiling to death one
degree at a time, the idea becomes accepted through repetition,
obfuscation, euphemisms, junk science and extreme public
pressure. Before the average person realizes it, he or she
begins spouting the propaganda with conviction and belief,
defending it ardently when questioned or confronted. Viral in
nature, the ideas spread and dissention is silenced or
eliminated.
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With propaganda, the pendulum
swings both ways, with neither side being justice, logical or
humane. The commonality shared: propaganda and the distortion
of reality to both sides of the pendulum presses forth an agenda
that rarely benefits society as a whole, yet provides absolution
for those promoting it and a sense of acceptance and a greater
purpose for those espousing it.
Looking at the cigarette example
in modern times, propaganda's objective is to equate bad, evil
or undesirable characters with cigarettes; subconsciously people
begin to equate those that smoke as bad people. In the beginning
its objective married health and vitality with smoking and the
people who smoked as hip; the pendulum effectively swings back.
Symbols of health and youth populated the ads and message. Both
instances are propaganda because facts support neither
conclusively.
The tactic, of placing symbols in proximity of the
message or messenger is called transference. Transference is a
classic propaganda technique. Transference creates consent
through proximity of visual or auditory clues. Innuendo and
implied consent, this is one of the reasons corporations will
not allow photos or publicity near or in their stores or
locations, whether for a product they carry or a cause. Simply
putting the company in the picture or using its logo implies
consent, support and approval. Politicians love transference,
consider kissing and holding a baby. NEXT |
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