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;
Gene, Michael and bettykath have scared me off this thread. Just too damn scary for me.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
We are almost there, obviously…….
Come to think of it, witnessing our government trying to amend the laws prohibiting the military from propagandizing the American people sounds a lot like the typical ex-post-facto decriminalization procedure normally followed by the Congress and Courts whenever the corporate/military elites have already broken the laws so egregiously that the laws must now change to claim that the law-breaking didn’t really happen — and can now proceed legally.
As the Big Brother Party slogan has it: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
bettykath,
I agree that the outsourcing of propaganda has already proceeded beyond recall and repair, but I think it has gone so far, over such a long period of time, that now we have an imperial military outsourcing its self-serving propaganda to the corporations that own the government that works for them.
The old expression “hiding behind the troops” has acquired a whole new meaning when taken literally.
Shano,
“shano 1, May 22, 2012 at 6:24 pm
One problem I see with this is that the government could start ‘outsourcing’ to the free market with private contractors.”
They are already doing it. The DoD has contractors creating their propaganda. How do we know? It was the contractors that created phony facebook accts and web sites for journalists who were asking too many questions.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-04-19/vanden-brook-locker-propaganda/54419654/1
Apropos of the subject of this discussion, a few words from the master:
Condensed and simplified for a televised Republican Party “town hall” audience on privatizing Social Security, delivered by President George W. Bush in May of 2005:
There we have the long and the short of it, so to speak.
Folks, somebody help me.
I wandered over to this thread by mistake but then I saw a lot of capital “J” letters. I have an old habit: when I see capital “J” letters, I think, “hey maybe they’re talking about the Jews,” and I tune in. It’s that thing about how and where you put your attention; the psychologists use it to test people’s responses when they are not even aware of their own attitudes.
Anyway, then I get this stuff about how the Jews declared war on Germany and starved the Germans into submission and stuff, and frankly, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to study it in-depth. But somebody bring me up to date, OK?
Did six million Jews get convicted of war crimes during WWII, and is that why they were executed?
I’m wondering because by now, some of the right-wing press has Trayvon Martin on death row (retroactively) for vicious unprovoked and unrelenting assault on George Zimmerman and if I need to change my whole view of the world and everything in it, I better hurry up, being an old lady in fragile health and all.
Elaine,
Thanks for the additional link.
*********
Shano,
What do you think advertising paid for by groups like AEI are? They are propaganda by a group seeking to exercise control over both the government and the people. Of course they outsource propaganda services already. The change now is more symbolic in that they aren’t even going to pretend anymore that they are trying to control public opinion so they can do what they want. If you were wondering what symbol they are using precisely, it’s not the index finger or the ring finger but somewhere in between.
Shano, it probably already has.
One problem I see with this is that the government could start ‘outsourcing’ to the free market with private contractors.
Those private contractors will have an incredible advantage over others with no government contract.
When dealing in widgets or hammers this may not make much difference but in ‘information’ it may make a huge difference.
Gene,
FYI:
Rep. Smith on his controversial bills
The Washington Democrat discusses his bills to ban domestic indefinite detention but allow domestic “propaganda”
By Glenn Greenwald
May 22, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/rep_smith_on_his_controversial_bills/singleton/
Thanks, Bron.
“But Gene failed to mention how zionists used propaganda, and he failed to mention the Creel Commission/CPI, the first instance in history of the use of propaganda by a government to generate war fervor. This is a stunning oversight. ”
I failed to mention it because it isn’t true.
Even within the historical example of Ramses II, what you say isn’t true. The reason Ramses needed propaganda to show he was a successful military leader was to keep public support for any military adventure he should choose to engage. The Battles of Kadesh were not the only battles fought during his reign. The truth of the matter is that Ramses waged quite a few wars and the majority of them successfully. He fudged about Kadesh because he didn’t want to spoil the public perception of his winning record so the next time he decided to go to war, the people would still support his efforts. That’s what made the Poem and the Bulletin prime examples of the danger of propaganda being used to spread disinformation or lie.
Much like the danger of the distortions and cherry picking you are engaging in right now in support of Nazi buddies.
Unfortunately for you, you’ve chosen to defend a group of people – the Nazis – who proved without a doubt that they were evil incarnate in action.
“But, but, but they were provoked! A non-existent state declared war on them!”
Of course, that had nothing to do with the rising tide of antisemitism the Nazi party was using to build local support by laying all the problems Germany suffered at the end of WWI at the hands of the Allies at the feet of the Jews.
Which, of course, brings up the topic of misdirection. The Creel Commission operated in WWI from April 13, 1917 to August 21, 1919. WWI by comparison lasted from July, 28 1914 and lasted until November 11, 1918. During that time, Jews were an integrated part of German society. In fact, Hitler himself served with Jewish soldiers and officers during “the Great War”. The CPI’s purpose was indeed to garner support for a war against Germany in support of American allies because at the time there was a significant isolationist movement within the country. While it is important to pick and choose as a nation when and where to engage in war, the isolationists were in fact quite unrealistic about the nature of diplomacy and foreign policy. Although the causes of WWI are complex and worthy of an article (or even the many books written on the subject), the conflict – ostensibly triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria – opened in earnest with the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia which was quickly followed by the German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France. In other words, it was a war of aggression started by Germany and the Central Powers (although Italy abstained). America was late to coming to the war, but when they did, it was at the behest of their allies and in an effort to end the stalemate that had resulted on the Western Front.
Your attempts to bring up the Creel Commission out of context as a rational for what the Nazis later did in WWII is simply misdirection.
Gene H:
I forgot to compliment you on your most interesting article. It was very good.
The info on ancient Egypt was fascinating and not at all surprising.
Elaine,
Interesting article (and congrats on the shoutout), but the history it relays doesn’t present anything problematic for my purposes. That we are already propagandized (and not just by government) was indeed one of the touchstones I was going to make later. I had actually been thinking about starting this series for some time now (I had discussed the matter briefly with OS a couple of weeks before this all happened), but the Buzzfeed story seemed like a good impetus and tie in to start. As to what the article concluded? “[R]ather than acting shocked, shocked! to find that there’s government propagandizing going on in the media, perhaps progressives can keep doing what they’ve always done best: expose the pablum and its purveyors, and use the truth to put them in their place.” This dovetails nicely with where I was heading.
Thanks for the link!
Gene,
I thought you might be interested in reading the following Mother Jones article. Adam Weinstein, the author of the piece, thinks that Juan Cole, I, and other progressives are worked up over nothing with regard to the Smith/Thornberry Amendment:
Is Congress Really Authorizing US Propaganda at Home?
Progressives are worked up over a new “brainwashing” law for misguided reasons.
—By Adam Weinstein
| Tue May. 22, 2012
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/congress-propaganda
rafflaw, 1. can you provide an answer to the question, Was there a casus belli underlying the Jewish declaration of war on Germany in March 1933?
2. The Jewish declaration of war on Germany was not a mere publicity stunt, it was an “existential threat.” Edwin Black wrote:
“The boycott unnerved the Nazis, who believed that Jews wielded supernatural international economic power. They knew that in the past Jews had used boycotts effectively . . . Whether or not this new boycott actually possessed the punishing power to crush the Reich economy was irrelevant; what mattered was that Germany perceived the Jewish-led boycott as the greatest threat to its survival. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Black.html
As detailed elsewhere, Germans “believed” their survival was threatened because they had already suffered the starvation deaths of 800,000 of its citizens, and believed –correctly– that Jewish agents were instrumental in maintaining the blockade that denied food to their people even after armistice, in order to coerce Germany to sign the Versailles treaty whose terms benefited zionists but were onerous to Germans (as well as Italians, btw, which led to the rise of Mussolini).
3. Even against this “threat to their survival,” Germans did NOT react viciously toward Jews.
In his article, Gene wrote:
“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.”
But Gene failed to mention how zionists used propaganda, and he failed to mention the Creel Commission/CPI, the first instance in history of the use of propaganda by a government to generate war fervor. This is a stunning oversight.
As I noted elsewhere, zionists did use propaganda, in August 1919, in a publicity release that claimed that “6 million Jews” among them “800,000 Jewish children” were threatened with starvation in Germany, as a result of “BIGOTED LUST FOR JEWISH BLOOD.”
First of all, we can infer from the fact that Edwin Black mentioned the starvation deaths of 800,000 Germans but did NOT complain of the deaths of Jewish people among them, that Jewish people did not suffer the travails that Gov. Glynn claimed. (It is not unlikely that German Jews, who were acknowledged to be wealthy, had access to blackmarket goods.)
The facts of that situation are that Chaim Weizmann** and other zionists influencing and acting in concert with Winston Churchill and his successor war planners, and with Versailles negotiators, imposed and then maintained the blockade on German foodstuffs, causing starvation of Germans, even after the armistice, until, under duress, Germany signed the Versailles treaty that granted a homeland to Jews in Palestine. In other words, far from being the victims of “bigoted lust for Jewish blood,” Jews were among those who had caused the situation resulting in the deaths of non-Jewish Germans.
4. Earlier, mention was made of Jorg Friedrich’s book “The Fire,” which documents the systematic firebombing of 150 German cities, by Allies, between 1940 and 1945. The stated aim of the firebombing was to terrorize German civilians, the second instance in which war had been deliberately waged on civilians/ (The first instance in which civilians had been the deliberate target of warfare was the starvation/blockade of Germany by the Allies in the first world war. see above)
Erich Mendelsohn, known as “the Jewish architect,” a close friend of Chaim Weizmann and the architect of Weizmann institute and the “International style” that dominates architecture in Israel, worked with U.S. Air Force and chemical companies to design buildings in the Utah desert. The purpose for constructing “German village” was to replicate as closely as possible the materials and structure of working-class Germans, so that Allied bombers could most efficiently destroy the houses as well as create a firestorm that would spread to the entire town, imposing maximum loss of life and property. Six hundred thousand civilians were incinerated; millions were left homeless; 150 German cities were obliterated, taking with them Germany’s “cultural bridge to its ancient past.”
Let me make this clear: a Jew who had been educated in his native Germany collaborated with U.S. forces to enact one of the greatest, and least acknowledged, war crimes of the century.
As the 1919 Gov. Glynn letter, above, reveals, the meme of “6 million Jews threatened . . .result of bigoted lust for Jewish blood” was not just a propagandistic fraud, it was an inversion of the facts.
Apply the pattern of the firebombing of German civilians to the last part of your statement, and draw your own conclusions.
**We know this from, among other sources, Simon Winchester’s biography of the Atlantic ocean, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s book, “A Place Among the Nations.”
What I think of “Hurry Up and Wait” American militarist propaganda, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to …
I disapprove of propaganda, no matter what its ultimate goals, because it aims its appeal at The Crowd. Hence, I want as little part of it as I can manage. As beautifully explained by James Alexander, in Thought-Control in Everyday Life (1928):
As George Orwell put it in 1984:
Propaganda aims its insidious appeal at this Crowd: “the lowest form of human association,” composed of persons clearly obliged to play a part and incapable of not joining in the expected Crowd behavior. I want no part of any “communication” with this Crowd, especially of the one-way kind with me on the receiving end. I deeply suspect and resent “the enormous power of suggestion and weakening of our own strength to resist its influence” that propaganda’s proponents clearly wish to exploit for their own purposes, regardless of mine.
Finally, If my pessimism regarding propaganda proves well-founded, then I will not experience the slightest disappointment; and if an occasional instance of benevolent propaganda should come to my attention, then i will gladly feel pleasantly surprised.