by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“Darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence.” – Terry Pratchett
As we’ve previously discussed in the Propaganda Series, The Sound of Silence, propaganda is not always language or images. Sometimes it is the lack of words. It is just as important to “listen to what is not said” as it is to “listen to what is said”. Sometimes though, propagandists try to time travel. They employ a tactic in an attempt to change the present by attempting to change the past. I say “attempt” for reasons that will be clear soon enough.
When a propagandist tries to pull off this particular trick, they don’t need a fancy machine or a black hole or a magic potion as is the staple trope of science fiction and fantasy time travel. They need nothing more complicated than a pen or a typewriter. In the present, a word processor and some basic HTML coding skills will serve that purpose. Maybe Photoshop or GIMP. When a propagandist tries to change the present by changing the past, they don’t call it time travel. No. They don’t call it anything, because they really hope you don’t notice what they are doing. Silence will work often, but they are not above a bit of misdirection. Well executed propaganda does, after all, have much in common with stage magic.
When we citizens and media consumers catch their slight of hand, we don’t call it time travel either. We call it historical revisionism. Just this week, the Obama Administration was caught red-handed doing precisely that in relation to the Edward Snowden case.
Continue reading “Propaganda 104 Supplemental: Just Because You’ve Forgotten Doesn’t Mean You’re Forgiven” →
Most are aware of the situation Edward Snowden faces: stranded essentially in a legal and diplomatic limbo the result of a protracted effort by the US government to arrest him by pulling nearly all diplomatic stops out. To encourage the Russians to deny him asylum and convey him to the United States for trial, is a letter promising to provide Mr. Snowden due process of law from an administration widely criticized to respect those rights to be believed? Or is it that they can have credibility given the allegations of abuse of the rights to privacy of the American citizenry by data mining their private information, the activities of which Mr. Snowden is alleged to have revealed?
