The Word
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Originally, I drafted this article with a preface about the story Michael Hastings recently broke on BuzzFeed about an amendment to the latest defense authorization bill that would “legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences.” However, as I worked on it this morning, our very own poet laureate and research librarian extraordinaire Elaine Magliaro cut me off at the pass with her own excellent article on the subject. So instead of repeating the points she makes which illustrate why understanding propaganda is important, I will refer you to her post “How about Some Government Propaganda for the People Paid for by the People Being Propagandized?”
Now that the kid gloves have come off regarding the governmental efforts to control your mind by controlling both your information and how you receive it, let’s discuss the nature of propaganda. Now more than ever, it is important to know the basics of how propaganda works. Since words are the basic building block of the English language, we’ll start with asking what is propaganda, look at some general history of the practice, consider the importance of meaning of words, the ideas of connotation and denotation, and the process of selecting “value loaded” words.
What is propaganda? Webster’s defines the word as follows:
propaganda \ˌprä-pə-ˈgan-də, ˌprō-\, n.,
1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions (ed. note: Not relevant, but interesting.)
2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
But that’s not exactly what people feel when they hear the word, is it? Why do most people have a negative reaction to the word “propaganda”? After all, by definition, “propaganda” is much like the verb “to persuade” in meaning.
persuade \pər-ˈswād\, v., v.t.,
1: to move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action
2: to plead with : urge
Etymologically speaking, the word “propaganda” is fairly new as a political science term. “Propaganda” didn’t come into common use as a political science term until World War I. Even then it was not a pejorative in use like it is today. The word originated (some would say unsurprisingly so) as shorthand referring to the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregatio de Propaganda Fide or the “congregation for propagating the faith”. This committee of cardinals was established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions. The word “propaganda” is the feminine gerund of the Italian verb “propagando” which in turn is derived from the Latin verb prōpāgō, meaning “to propagate”.
propagate \ˈprä-pə-ˌgāt\, v., v.t.,
3a : to cause to spread out and affect a greater number or greater area : extend b : to foster growing knowledge of, familiarity with, or acceptance of (as an idea or belief) : publicize c : to transmit (as sound or light) through a medium
Clearly the largest distinction between persuasion and propaganda is that propaganda is a form of large scale persuasion. Persuasion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Changing someone’s mind is a better tactic than violence. Persuasion is at the heart of society’s pillar and replacement for self-help justice and dispute resolution, the adversarial court system. Persuasion is an alternative to coercion.
So what is propaganda? It’s a tool to change people’s minds. Like any tool, it is capable of beneficial use and horrific misuse. This makes understanding how the tool works critical if you want to recognize (and possibly work to prevent) its misuse.
If that is the case the word originally had no pejorative use, then why do most people have an automatic negative reaction to the word “propaganda”? This brings us to the ideas of connotation and denotation. Plainly put, denotation is a direct specific meaning; the literal meaning of a word and nothing more. Connotation is a “something” suggested by a word or thing; an implied meaning. I suggest the negative connotation for the word “propaganda” comes from both the negative denotation built in to the word itself (part of the definition is “for the purpose of helping or injuring” and injury carries the negative notion of harm to self and/or others) and the recent historical use of propaganda to dastardly ends culminating to create an implied negative meaning beyond the definition. The denotation of a word is not the direct province of the propagandist. They have to know what the words actually mean, but that is of limited value to them. The edge of the propagandist’s knife so to speak lies in the connotation of words. More on that topic as we move along. In the 20th Century, we have seen what truly evil injury propaganda is capable of inflicting on a society. To know how we got to today, it is important to have a bit of historical perspective.
Historically, the idea of propaganda has been around as long as there have been society and governments. For example, in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh Ramses II claimed a great victory over the Hittites in the Battles of Kadesh (possibly the largest chariot battle in history). The two most common forms of Egyptian records of the battles are known as “The Poem” and “The Bulletin”. Both are found carved into multiple sites in Egypt, all built or expanded upon by Ramses II – one of the greatest builders of ancient Egypt. “The Bulletin” is found on seven different temples or monuments and eight total sites have “The Poem”. When you add numerous other references on papyrus and in tangentially related carvings, this makes the Battles of Kadesh one of the best recorded battles of antiquity. The tale told is of an overwhelming victory for Ramses II and Egypt.
There’s only one problem with that depiction.
It is most certainly a lie at worst and an exaggeration at best.
Hittite records, although not as numerous, all tell the tale of a Hittite victory. Archaeological evidence is inconclusive. One of the two parties is lying and possibly both. Most modern historians have come to the conclusion that the battle likely ended in a draw. Given that, why did Ramses II carve his non-existent victory into stone? Propaganda is the answer. Ramses II wanted the reputation as a strong military leader even if the reality wasn’t so glorious. So he fluffed the details and spread the word that “Ramses II Kicks Ass!” Unless you were at the Battles of Kadesh, who were you to argue with a Living God? Then realizing that his chances for immediate military exploits were practically nil, Ramses II did what any respectable Pharaoh would do and a secondary exercise in propaganda: he returned to the building spree he started as a young man. Some would say the greatest building spree in the history of the ancient Egypt. Just like the Romans after him, Ramses knew that impressive buildings were a kind of psychological warfare – non-verbal propaganda geared at projecting the power of the throne to the masses, but more on this at a later date. The focus here is language and the basics of propaganda.
In the beginning, there was the word. Those with the word were limited. If they could not speak directly, they were limited by how many manual physical copies they could get out to the masses and how many of the masses could read. Then came the printing press in the 15th Century. When Guttenberg invented it, one of the early adopters of the technology was the Holy Roman Empire. By the end of the Renaissance, book making was industrialized to the point that printer/binders could produce between three and four thousand pages per day: a hundred fold increase in production compared to the most prolific of scribes. Books and written material went from rare treasures to common items. As knowledge became democratized, the use of printed propaganda grew in unison: public notices, political flyers and proto-newspapers became cheap and abundant.
The 20th Century was in some ways a Golden Age for deploying propaganda. Unlike any previous age, the 20th Century was the age of mass communications. Industrial mass printing of newspapers, radio, television, telephones and the Internet radically changed the way humans communicate. The word became King and the picture became Queen. Even illiteracy wasn’t the barrier it had posed to the ancient world as the spoken word supplemented the written and the truism that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is a truism for a reason. Even physical handicap was less of a barrier to getting the message out as those blind to the printed word and picture and deaf to the spoken word now had the channel of communication created by the 19th Century invention of Braille. As propaganda is large scale persuasion, mass media provided a natural accelerant. What had previously been a candle of propaganda became a bonfire necessarily becoming a political science term in common usage. The 20th Century saw probably the most devastating use of propaganda to date on any population. Propaganda was instrumental to both the Nazi war effort and their social engineering that allowed them to industrially murder six million Jews, Roma, homosexuals and handicapped. Propaganda was key to the crimes of the Khemer Rouge. Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Castro’s rise to power in Cuba. The wrongful, misguided and likely illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. These are a few of many examples where propaganda has been used to either garner public support for ethically wrong actions by government or obfuscate the truth to aid the guilty from being brought to justice. This point will be addressed further in a later column, but it goes a long way to explaining how a word of neutral value became a word of negative value due to recent history.
We are still left with the word. As far as the word “propaganda” proper, we know what it means. We know where it comes from. We know the goal of propaganda in general. That leaves us with word choice and the idea of “value loaded” word and how it relates to propaganda. What are words loaded with? They are loaded with implication. This is why connotation is the edge of the propagandist’s knife. Word choice is critical. As I noted earlier, the denotation of a word is not the direct province of the propagandist. The edge of the propagandist’s knife so to speak lies in the connotation of words. However, knowing the proper denotation of words – i.e. having a large vocabulary – puts one at a tactical advantage against the propagandist. If one knows the actual meaning of words, it becomes more difficult for the propagandist to use connotation against you.
For example, consider the use of media outlets like NPR that made a public and conscious decision to refrain from reporting on “torture” – a word with extremely negative denotation and connotation – and instead choosing to use the euphemistic language “enhanced interrogation”. Everyone with a conscience thinks torture is a bad thing and torturers are ethically abhorrent people. It’s not only a Federal crime, cruel and unusual punishment is specifically barred by the 8th Amendment of the Constitution. The word choice here is designed to clearly shift public attitudes from “those guys need to be prosecuted as criminals” to “maybe they aren’t so bad after all”. NPR (aided by the Bush Administration no doubt) chose words with a neutral/positive value load compared to the word “torture”. Connotation plays to your emotional response over your rational response. When the word choice becomes more subtle, the damage of connotations can be even more insidious. Compare:
- war – limited police action
- conquest – liberation
- famine – widespread hunger
- pestilence – outbreak
- death – casualties
Be aware and suspicious of word choice, certainly. Especially when dealing with adjectives as they have by their nature a great capacity to carry connotation. However, it is equally important to consider the speaker. When evaluating something you suspect is propaganda, ask these questions:
- Who is the speaker?
- What does the speaker want from me?
- What advantage does the speaker gain from my agreement or lose from my disagreement? And vice-versa?
- Does the speaker represent other interests that may not be obvious?
- Why is the speaker giving this message now?
What is your first line of defense against propaganda?
Be aware of the meaning and choice of words. To that end, work to strengthen your vocabulary. Buy a “Word A Day” calender or download an app for your phone, use a website or download a tickler program for your computer.
Always question the message and the messenger as well as any who may have sent the messenger. Practice reading with emotional detachment and a critical eye to not only what is said, but how it is said and by whom.
Keep in mind that propaganda is a tool. It is inherently neutral. The good or evil is found in the intent of the speaker and their desired actions and/or reactions on your part.
What is your first line of defense against propaganda? You are. And that is my unhidden message to you: Wake up. Civilization calls. The world is what we make it.
The next article in this series will address methodology, strategy and tactics in deploying propaganda.
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
The Propaganda Series;
Propaganda 105: How to Spot a Liar
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Streisand Effect and the Political Question
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Sound of Silence
Propaganda 104: Magica Verba Est Scientia Et Ars Es
Propaganda 103: The Word Changes, The Word Remains The Same
Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Holly Would “Zero Dark Thirty”
Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Child’s Play
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Build It And They Will Come (Around)
Related articles of interest;
OK, from another source on the web, a list-serve of “The Patrick Crusade” that advocates for prison reform, I just got this message, which I have not yet investigated, and I have not yet watched the video clip.
Quoted from the Patrick Crusade e-mail:
“This film explores the evolution of propaganda and
public relations in the United States, with an emphasis
on the elitist theory of democracy and the relationship
between war, propaganda and class.
‘Psywar’ exposes the propaganda system, providing
crucial background and insight into the control of
information and thought.
Video: [here, the url did not reproduce; I’ll try again]*
Psywar: The Real Battlefield is Your Mind
P.S. Please share Forbidden Knowledge TV e-mails
and videos with your friends and colleagues.
OK, I figured out that you go to the url:
http://www.ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.com
and you click on
Psywar: The Real Battlefield Is Your Mind
and they play a video for yiou.
I did not have time to watch it, thought that some on this thread might want to try. If not, sorry for irrelevant post.
BTW, thanks for giving me another chance to point out a propaganda tactic.
Your cooperation on these matters is greatly appreciated.
id707,
Looking for trouble again, Mr. Passive Aggressive? Not getting enough attention from the nurses? Do you even know what a straw man is?
It’s when someone purposefully misrepresents another’s position to attack it.
Which is precisely what MM did by attributing statements to me that I didn’t make. This is indeed the second time he has done this and this is the second time you’ve joined in defense of him while he’s used this tactic. The last time ended up with me handing both of you your asses on a factual plate doing exactly what I did this time: pointing out that I did not say what you claimed I said.
At least you are predictable.
If you don’t like me calling out the straw man tactic? Don’t support those who use it. It’s a favored tactic of propagandists and those with unusually weak counter arguments. Which is odd considering MM claims to have professional military training at propaganda. If true, Occam’s Razor suggests he misrepresents other’s positions on purpose. I can even speculate as to why but I won’t. It isn’t relevant.
However, what is relevant is the tactic. When someone misrepresents what I say just to attack it? No matter who it is?
I’m going to point it out.
If you don’t like that? Tough. I didn’t say he was using a straw man for my own amusement. I said it because that is what he was doing. I never mentioned Cambodia in the context of its relationship with America. I used Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge as an example. You’d both know that if you could understand what you read or formulate cogent arguments without resorting to fallacies.
I’ll wear any hat I please up to and including my vicious bastard hat.
Was that plain enough for you to understand?
Or do you need clarification?
@ Idealist, yes, of course. I was just teasing you because of the salt.
We’re probably all scared of each other and we probably all come by it honestly. Whenever we are not scared ENOUGH, we call ourselves stupid later on. When we are TOO scared of each other, we get into ridiculous self-defeating loops that entangle our mental capacities.
Everything leads back to the “what does it mean?” and it’s life’s work.
leander, are you aware of the deep animus between German Jews and Russian (esp Communist/Bolshevic) Jews?
In the US this was profound. German Jews arrived in US first, usually with some wealth as well as access to financing assistance from European Jews.
They in turn became wealthy in the US. When Russian Jews began to migrate to US, they were scorned by Jews already here and established.
Even today, in a Midwestern US city where German Jews settled early on and prospered mightily, Russian Jews occupy the second largest number of government subsidized housing units. Turns out Jews are not so monolithic after all; they are a cross-section of mankind, just like the rest of us: rich and poor; smart and dumb, successful and not so successful; even Jews living on U S government welfare subsidies–both inside AND outside of Israel.
Malisha,
I did not notice it until the curator led me to the water to drink of the sea of knowledge. And that was in Kerstin’s last weeks. I never begrudged her or any other woman since for “guiding” me. Then I was only irritated that we had spent years not saying what we wanted or who we were. But that again is not unusual.
But when OS said it, it became threatening in how we all can be manipulated. And who’s to stop them.
My last resort is to say: Don’t believe anything you see or hear via media. It’s all propaganda. Every column inch is paid for in some script or another.
Script? That’s play money used often in connection with wars.
TalkingBack, I’m not reading your post; I’m not revising my opinion of what you have said before on this thread; I’m not interested in your subtle apologetics; I’m not impressed by your self-righteous bluster. You can post back to me from now until doomsday because how you arrived at your conclusions and the arguments you may propose to support your own thinking, though perhaps very significant and exciting to you, are neither significant nor exciting to me.
Our guest blogger today has shown again in his little tiff with MM that he is indeed a master propagandist. And leader of the ´”bully boys at JT’s”.
He, in his post ending with wishing MM good luck with his poetry (some conceits have we all), draws off his garb of good samaritan guarding us from propanganda (in this case).
He reveals as usual his tactic of never answering opposing arguments except by ignoring or ignobling them as “utter nonsense.
If that does not reveal his real character sufficiently, regard then his continuing with ad hominem attacks. “strawmen” accusations, “opponent’s stupidity” in various forms, but never addressing the issues or points raised. He did briefly with Kmer Rouge, but then was only clarifying the most obscure part of his previous rant.
Why do I comment? Not out of a sense of outraged justice, No, GeneH wouldn’t or won’t understand that or he would not spout this.
Only because I was enjoying his propaganda until he revealed the learing face behind the mask of academic rectitude carrying the shield of the knight defending our nation.
As for education being a shield against propaganda. Well I take my knowledge from the Chomsky bit I have often posted here (just days ago) which shows that the higher you go the more you must internalize the message of the majority in power, or you will be filtered out. QED Those with college degrees are already proven consumers of propaganda.
And let me say in passing that I have Hayakawa’s book, but never got past the first pages. Some are dumber that others. But even I can see a drawing of red herrings across the trail to deal with a disturbing argument.
What does GeneH threaten with? Only his bile. And it is boringly always the same color.
And just to keep a step ahead. I’m neither senile nor in the need of uppiing my medicines, which is becoming silly in the number of repetitions.
No, whatever form his attacks, they always run true to form. Just so you know.
One last point. I find the differentiation between denotation and connnotation as misleading.
There are no clear denotations unless these are just convenient milestones in the living language agreeed upon in a dictionary or equivalent written document. Living language is always full of connotations—only connatations. And these change from one day to the next. As our surroundings and society dictate.
And connotations thus as agreed for the moment at the place they are used, from group to group, from professional field to another, from generation to another,….. continue as you please. Am sure you can.
I like GeneH, in fact greatly. But only as long as he keeps his good guy hat on abd leaves the knives to Mr. Hyde to wield.
Malisha,
in his tutorial on “Propaganda,” Gene urged readers to “Practice reading with emotional detachment and a critical eye to not only what is said, but how it is said and by whom.”
Elaine asked:
“So…is talkingbacktocspan disputing the fact that Hitler and his gang of thugs killed more than 6,000,000 people?”
I responded, “Yes.”
(It is reasonable to assume that Elaine was referring to “6,000,000 Jews, inasmuch as that is the narrative the world has been told for many years. (Curious how that ‘6,000,000’ figure is precisely the same as the obviously phony letter produced by former gov. Glynn in August 1919.) Many, many more than “6,000,000 people” died in the wars, the largest majority at the hands of Russians, under the leadership of Winston Churchill’s good friend, “Uncle Jo” Stalin.
You morphed that question and response into:
“So now I get it. The Jews caused the Holocaust but it didn’t actually happen after all. What that says about the use of propaganda is important: Give the cause, deny the effect, come out with a Q.E.D. anyway.”
Nowhere did I write that “Jews caused the Holocaust.”
I stated facts and evidence to support the claim that zionists imposed a blockade on the German population, knowing in advance that those people had already suffered horribly from a blockade, and with the goal and purpose of inducing German Jews to flee Germany for (preferably) Palestine, which desperately needed their wealth to survive. That blockade against Germany persisted for over five years — longer than the WWI blockade. As the timeline below shows,
The second part of your question, as you wrote it, needs further context.
Gene H. wrote earlier that:
“Also, what the German civilians had to endure in WWI was not industrialized slaughter, dumbass. It was simply the horrors of war. No one was setting up camps and murdering them with factory efficiency.”
Jews — and others — died in the war, in unconscionable numbers.
The contents of Jorg Friedrich’s book, “The Fire,” presents compelling evidence that German civilians were “murdered” with industrialized “factory efficiency” by means of firebombing that killed nearly a million civilians and destroyed 150 German towns and villages — 3/4 of all of Germany, and nearly all of Germany’s link with its ancient past. Furthermore, according to this flier for a Feb 2012 retrospective on the work of Erich Mendelsohn,
“One of the most compelling sidebars in Mendelsohn’s life (and in the film) involves a village he helped construct in the Nevada desert. The U.S. had entered World War II, but there were troubles. Allied bombs, dropped onto the rooftops of enemy cities, were failing to have the intended devastating effect; since Germany’s top-level topography was different than what America had reckoned. The government enlisted Mendelsohn’s aid (or rather, Mendelsohn volunteered) in designing a mock German village for purposes of target practice. Mendelsohn, the architect who in many ways built modern Berlin, was now helping to destroy it; there are unpursued parallels here between Einstein and the Manhattan Project. The German Village period might be the pinnacle of the Mendelsohnian tragedy, but Dror leaves it up to us to decide. With minimal editorial framing, we are stuck weighing the horrors of Allied firebombing against the evils of Axis aggression. We yearn for a third choice, and wonder if such a thing is possible.”
What was done to the German civilian population, deliberately and for the purpose of terrorizing civilians, meets the definition of a war crime. Neither Winston Churchill, who urged for the bombing campaign; nor the US military and political leaders who endorsed it an carried it out; nor Erich Mendelsohn, who volunteered to lend his expertise, were ever charged as war criminals. Mendelsohn designed the Weizmann Institute in Israel, as well as the ‘International style’ that dominates the Israeli landscape today.
In his book, Hollowlands: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, author/architect Eyal Weizman “unravels Israel’s mechanisms of control and its transformation of the Occupied Territories into a theoretically constructed artifice, in which natural features function as the weapons and ammunition with which the conflict is waged.”
Idealist, after Kerstin did that to you for years, you were still pretty much unharmed by it, right? Here’s your blessing: May no evil worse than salt-passing happen to you in the next 100 years. We can all be OK.
“A simple example of an indirect suggestion could be a gesture as simple as making a comment at the dinner table that I do not see the salt. You would pick up the salt shaker and hand it to me just as if I asked you directly to pass the salt.” OS
Seen that, been done to me for years by my Kerstin. Thanks for showing it.
TalkingBack, honoring your mother and father are not on my list of things to do, not today, not ever — According to the Ten Commandments, those are for YOU to do. And now, you do what you want and I do what I want, which does not include any obedience to your wishes.
whoever doesn’t agree with it is best advised to eat shit.
Malisha, you were invited to eat shit NOT because you did not “agree” with the things I had written (which are, btw, from predominantly Jewish sources), but because you dishonored the sacrifices imposed on my Mother and Father, an outcome of a war that did not have to be.
have a second helping.
Elaine M: TalkingBacktoCSpan gave you the definitive answer!
So now I get it. The Jews caused the Holocaust but it didn’t actually happen after all. What that says about the use of propaganda is important: Give the cause, deny the effect, come out with a Q.E.D. anyway.
All I wish is that TalkingBack would re-post (on his website) that explanation (that Gene H read) of how the Jews caused 9/11 so we could undo the destruction that allegedly took place on September 11, 2001 in New York and get those towers and those people BACK here!
Elaine M. 1, May 21, 2012 at 11:35 pm
yes
Gene H, wow, I didn’t know your grandfather was Jewish! My Landsman! (Thanks, Gene, for much appreciated compliment.)
Leander, I know, it’s totally boring. And you’re right it has definitely fallen on deaf ears if anybody thinks that there’s use in addressing a fact that is not connected in a causal way to a rational view of a very clear picture.
And it does remind me of the Zimmerman case, in this respect: The talk about boo boos on Zimmerman’s head, for instance, had nothing to do with either the murder or the fact that the police would not arrest Zimmerman for the murder. Our own Professor Turley put up the first picture to surface (taken by a layman’s cell phone allegedly and probably at the scene of the crime that night) with a headline strongly suggesting both that (a) it proved “serious injury” [which obviously it did not] and that (b) it might be proof of self-defense in the killing of Trayvon Martin [an even farther logical stretch, because you can get injured when you are murdering somebody even with premeditated intent; it is not a very safe activity].
A boycott of a dangerous tyrant and some hasty rescue operations before the boycott is lifted, while very interesting, neither proves treasonous or warmongering behavior by a group of people against a legitimate government trying to protect its people NOR guilt on their part for the obviously pre-planned, premeditated and prearranged murder of millions of their coreligionists in an allegedly unavoidable war. That’s just like saying Trayvon Martin’s attempts to protect himself amounted to an attack that George Zimmerman HAD to kill him for.
In fact, early in the war or perhaps even before WWII was actually in progress (I can’t remember the dates), the policy of picking up “mental defectives” and gassing them to death in mobile trucks while they were allegedly on the way to some institutions to house them had actually been stopped by the kinds of protests that international communities can wage to protest inappropriate and tyrannical state action that has broad targets.
OK, now I found the rudimentary facts. Starting in 1933 (sound familiar) the German government would notify certain people that they officially had a life that was “not worth living.” Then they would be picked up in trucks that had their windows painted over so nobody could see inside, and they were gassed to death, and then their bodies were cremated. Naturally, this got a few people in the net that it shouldn’t have messed with, although the Nazis were trying to keep it secret at the time. They said that these unfortunates were going to be “granted euthanasia.”
Soon the killings were conducted from 4 Tiergarten Street, Berlin, the Centre for the program named Aktion T4. The murders (initially of children who were classified as useless and worthless) were gradually extended to include teenagers and adults and were perpetrated in six German and Austrian institutions equipped with mobile gas vans or stationary gas installations and crematoria. Viktor Brack, head of Aktion T4, ordered that the killing should be performed only by physicians. I don’t know if it was or not. More than 5,000 children and some 70,000 adults fell victim to the Aktion T4 program. Their crime? Having “lives not worth living.”
Here’s the kicker: The Aktion T4 program was officially halted by 1941, largely due to public protest. (The Nazis got around that and killed whomever they wanted to kill, of course, but the official program that had lasted for years brought forth such a storm of protest that it had to be stopped IN 1941, when the Nazis in power were LEAST likely to amend their ways based on public outcry!)
This is very instructive. Effective protest (and I don’t even know what KIND) made the Nazis stop one of their murder programs. ON TOPIC this thread: counter-propaganda is also important. If you have a rogue government housing and supporting a virulent tyrant-bully with evil intent that has the real capacity to endanger freedom everywhere, TRY EVERYTHING. Boycotts, protest, counter-propaganda, escape, rescue operations, evasive actions, activation campaigns, infiltration, blah blah blah. You want to be careful not to do anything that might look provocative or nasty so as not to give credence to the lies already being told about you as the intended victim class? OK then, don’t do ANYTHING; see how that works out.
I find that if you go on the web and look for people to carry on saying that the Jews went “like sheep to the slaughter” in WWII and just filed onto the cattle cars in orderly fashion to be killed, you will find them (most of them not even born at the time of the Holocaust) giving self-righteous lectures about how the Jews SHOULD have behaved. They blame the mass murder on the victims who should have protested. Then you have folks like TalkingBack who say they brought it on themselves BY actions they took to protest.
Sounds like Police Chief Lee saying Trayvon Martin should have more effectively escaped while others insist that he brought on his own murder by trying to defend himself from Zimmerman.
The problem is that once someone, with the power of death in their army or in their HAND, has decided you are their enemy and they need to get rid of you, your options are not great unless YOU ARE ALSO ARMED. Your options are to either try to get away or try to defend. Either way, if you lose, there will be people who self-righteously declare you should not have tried to avoid your own murder and that by doing so, you justified it, after the fact.
This is old abuser technology. It’s just the impotent, pissy-pants wife-beater telling his punching bag, “Look what you made me do.”
Actually I wanted to add something about the Russian Czar and Henry Ford, and the “white” Russian network spreading colorful tales, eagerly picked up by the Nazis, or e.g. the Nazi manipulation of the numbers of Jewish communists, but I leave it at that. I seem to have accidentally pushed the the post button, while leaving to get a coffee.
To be quite honest I am really, really tired of these debates. I had them over and over again especially on the US net during the last decade.
Strictly by now I have the impression that most of these people beyond reach and to a large extend only attracted to colorful tales and ultimately unreachable by rational argument. I wonder if this is someone I have met before under a different web name.
I haven’t read the Edwin Black book but all of Francis R. Nicosia’s books on the topic. Strictly the international boycott was started by the British labor union and an ad hoc Jewish boycott group. The communists and the socialists obviously had been enemies for much longer, and immediate after Hitler’s seizure of power in Jan. 1933 the Reichstags Fire was used as an excuse to target the German left both Jewish and non-Jewish and it’s papers. The British labor union obviously was aware of this. I think America was slightly later in the year, after the election, for which the left had to get out of the way. And after they could turn to their central enemy, the curiously paradox threat Judeo-Bolsheviks and the “international finance Jews”.
Fact is that Zionist in Germany and Palestine or German Jews generally did not like the boycott,. they feared it could make them more vulnerable. The Zionists because they had pursued the transfer solution they had seeked even before the Nazis rise to power. But this would already be to complicated for “our friend” I guess.
Great post, Malisha. And with fine examples of propaganda throughout history. You may decry your lack of formal education, but you illustrate well the point that even autodidactics can have excellent instructors. My grandfather always said, “The only day wasted is a day you don’t learn something new.” I think he would have thought you don’t waste your time.
Rafflaw: you are ruining all of my fun reading these rants by actually producing factual information and logical reviews of the reasoning! It is so much fun reading the decades old crap about the Jews being responsible for everything bad in the world.
I just checked, because I’m actually decades old and I began to worry that somehow I had made people believe that crap about the Jews being responsible for everything bad in the world (see? Because I was, see?).
Guess what — it was even older than that!
In 70 BC Rome conquered Jerusalem, and Pompey apparently ordered the Jews to worship the Roman Gods. But there were so many of them, and that was so irritating, most Jews wouldn’t do it.
There came to be a real problem between some of the Jews and some of the Romans and blah blah blah. A Jew later called Jesus of Nazareth preached a lot and the Romans targeted him as “King of the Jews” — mind you, a religion that had as its dominant theme a slave rebellion that had been supported by THEIR God who was the ONLY God and who had chosen THEM as the best of the crowd, was not going to be popular with Rome!
The Romans crucified Jesus (it was already a well ingrained Roman habit to crucify folks) and by the time people were converting to Christianity, a large number of them were blaming the Jews (those stubborn non-converters) for killing him.
St. Paul proclaimed that the Jews “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out, the Jews who are heedless of God’s will and enemies of their fellow men…” (I Thessalonians 2:15-16)
As Christianity spread, the differences between Christianity and Judaism became more and more pronounced. But it was not until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire (oops, if we can’t whip them, join them and take over as HQ) that anti-Judaism became a serious threat to Jewish existence.
By the fourth century, Jews were generally despised by Christians everywhere. St. Augustine, one of Christianity’s most influential leaders, likened the Jewish people to Cain, who had murdered his own brother and thus became the first criminal in biblical history. St. Augustine wrote that Jews were a “wicked sect” and should be subjected to permanent exile because of their evil ways. John, the author of the book of Revelations, called Jews the children of the devil. (John.8:44)
Discrimination laws were passed throughout the Christian world to protect good Christians from Jewish “contamination” by enforced separation and second-class (if any) citizenship. By the sixth century, the anti-Jewish laws were common.
When the Muslim religion sprang up in the Middle East, it also named Jews, along with Christians, as essentially bad, anti-Allah people, to be despised.
Beginning in 1096, Christian leaders launched a series of crusades against the Muslims to win control of Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus. On their way to the Middle East, the crusader armies attacked Jewish communities all along the route. The First Crusade was especially bloody. Entire communities of Jews were forced to choose between baptism or death, and since few Jews would renounce their faith, the First Crusade resulted in nearly 10,000 Jews being slaughtered during the first six months alone.
Godfrey Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, vowed “to leave no single member of the Jewish race alive,” and ordered the synagogue in Jerusalem burned to the ground with its entire Jewish congregation trapped inside.
The Second Crusade, in 1146, was more sparing of Jewish lives; but, nevertheless, intensified the religious persecution of Jews.
Thousands of Jews fled to Eastern Europe, but they were unable to escape the relentless oppression, and by the thirteenth century, church leaders in what is now Germany required all Jews to wear cone-shaped hats so that no one would mistake them from ordinary Germans. In Latin countries, Jews were forced to sew yellow badges on their clothing as a means of instant identification. The persecutions continued, and most often, they were “justified” by slanders against the Jews, who were thought of as thugs entitled to no protection.
Peter Abler, a twelfth century philosopher and priest wrote of the Jews:
“Heaven is their only place of refuge. If they want to travel to the nearest town, they have to buy protection with huge sums of money from the Christian rulers who actually wish for the Jews’ deaths so that the rulers can confiscate the possessions of the Jews. The Jews cannot own land or vineyards. Thus, all that is left to them as a means of livelihood is the business of money lending, and this in turn brings the hatred of Christians upon them even more.”
Jews were allowed to become moneylenders largely because the Catholic Church considered it a sin for Christians to charge interest for lending money. And because Jews had few other ways of earning a living, large numbers of them eventually became bankers and financiers, which resulted in a stereotyping of Jews as money-hungry exploiters and usurers. It was a stereotype that was to linger even after Jews were driven from the banking industry years later, and still continues in many places up until the present day.
By the end of the fifteenth century, except for a few business encounters, Jews were totally isolated from their Christian neighbors. In some countries, Jews were forcibly confined in ghettos, sections of cities that were enclosed by high, prison-like walls. With forced segregation came new myths and stereotypes. Increasingly Jews were portrayed as agents of the devil, responsible for every catastrophe from random crime to plague and drought. Artists portrayed Jews as having horns, tails, and evil satanic faces. Christian priests and scholars often elaborated on the idea that Jews were evil creatures who were somehow less than human.
In 1517, Martin Luther, a Catholic priest in Germany, complained of corruption in the Church of Rome and called on Church leaders to reform. Instead, the Church branded him a heretic and excommunicated him. The result was the Protestant Reformation, which ultimately led to the founding of New Christian churches in Western Europe and a series of devastating wars.
Luther had hoped to convert the Jews to Christianity. In 1523, he told his followers, “…we in our turn ought to treat the Jews in a brotherly fashion in order that we convert some of them … we are but Gentiles, while Jews are of the lineage of Christ.” But when Jews refused to convert, an angry Luther wrote, in part:
“First their synagogues… should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity in order that God may see that we are Christians… Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed… For, as has been said, God’s rage is so great against them that they only become worse and worse through mild mercy, and not much better through severe mercy. Therefore away with them… To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may be free of this insufferable devilish burden — the Jews.”
Catholic Historian Malcolm Hay explained:
“Men are not born with hatred in their blood. The infection is usually acquired by contact; it may be injected deliberately or even unconsciously by the parents, or by the teachers… The disease may be spread throughout the land like the plague, so that a class, a religion, or a nation will become the victim of popular hatred without anyone knowing exactly how it all began; and people will disagree, and even quarrel among themselves, about the real reason for its existence; and no one foresees the inevitable consequences.”
Over time, most Jews were driven from central Europe. Many of them settled in Poland and Russia. But there the persecution continued. In 1648 and 1649, thousands of Polish Jews were slaughtered. During the late 1800’s, in both Poland and Russia, Jews were murdered in organized mass killings called pogroms.
Meanwhile, in France, many Christians were calling for the emancipation of Jews. This push for Jewish civil rights was an outgrowth of the French Revolution (1789-1799) with its emphasis on liberty and equality. The movement grew, and by the mid 1800’s, most Western and Central European Jews were fully emancipated.
Yet, during the late 1800’s, “Jew-hatred” resurfaced as a formidable force throughout Europe, and in 1879 the word “Anti-Semitism” was coined by the German journalist and pre-Fascist Wilhelm Mahr who felt he needed a more scientific, more benign, term than “Juden-hass” (German for “hatred of Jews”) to define a political movement centered upon hatred of Jews.
About this same time a new Jewish movement called Zionism emerged, and many Jews began working toward an independent Jewish state in Palestine, viewing this as the only sure way to avoid the resurgent persecution. Zionists in large numbers bought land and settled in Palestine.
In 1918, during the course of World War I, Britain captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. Fearing the hostility of the local Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations, Britain soon limited Jewish immigration to Palestine, even though many Jews had aided in the British takeover.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and set out on a concentrated program to intensify his nations hatred of the Jews. Hitler once said that if the Jews hadn’t existed he would have had to invent them. In many respects that is exactly what he did. Hitler mounted a powerful propaganda campaign designed and implemented by Joseph Goebbels, which blamed the Jews for Germany’s many economic problems, as well as Bolshevism and the worldwide threat of Communism. (Meanwhile, the communists blamed Jews for capitalism and the capitalists blamed Jews for communism.)
Germany’s nationalistic hatred of the Jews ultimately lead to what was known as the “Final Solution:” the physical annihilation of almost six million Jews — in addition to almost five million other non-Jewish “racial enemies” of the German people during World War II.
Jews the world over, vowing “Never Again” in reaction to the Holocaust, rallied to the Zionist cause. Though faced with often violent opposition from Palestinian Arabs and others, Jews persisted in their quest for a separate state with “secure boundaries.” Plenty of war, next step. Big burden of resentment and bitterness, too. No doubt about it.
In 1947, The UN partitioned divided Palestine into two separate states, and of course, another war. And then another and another and another and another. And proxy wars. Then you had a scene that could have been written by W.H. Auden, on both sides:
And now it’s time for us to learn
what all schoolchildren learn:
that those to whom evil is done
will do evil in return.
I believe I have probably gotten some facts wrong (lifted most of it from a non-copyrighted website) and quoted a few words wrong in the poem. My point, though, is that the twice-told tale of “Jews are responsible for all our problems” is not just old; it is primitive. It is the lazyman’s way to say:
OH yes, I am a failure, but only because of those Jews…