Randal Marlin Read online

  valuable criticisms and suggestions. I credit her with first getting me interested in the

  incubator babies story and much else.

  None of these acknowledgements should of course be construed as tainting any-

  one else with any share in the deficiencies that remain; for those I, of course, take full

  responsibility.

  note

  1 Albert Camus, “Preface,” Algerian Reports, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Modern Library, 1963) 84.

  xiv PROPAGANDA AND THE ETHICS OF PERSUASION

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  Preface to the Second Edition

  PREFACE

  TO THE SECOND

  EDITION

  The first edition of this book went to press early in 2002, appearing in August of that

  year, too early to capture one of the most significant propaganda campaigns of the new

  millennium. It was in that month that the administration of US President George W.

  Bush undertook to persuade the US public and the world that the September 11, 2001

  al-Qaeda attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Washington Pentagon

  were linked in some way to Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. The campaign culmi-

  nated with a visually seductive presentation by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the

  United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, complete with models, charts,

  diagrams, and photographs. He held up in his hand, with dramatic effect, a vial of white

  substance to illustrate his allegation that Hussein possessed anthrax and other weap-

  ons of mass destruction including a nuclear capability that threatened or would shortly

  threaten US security. In the months and years ahead, the actions of the Bush administra-

  tion reminded some commentators of Hermann Goering’s cynical claim that “the people

  can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”1 The absence of any

  reference to these events has been so glaring as to make this second edition imperative.

  Many other conspicuous propaganda campaigns have appeared in the interim.

  New terms, such as “Astroturf,” have come into being to describe a kind of propa-

  ganda already noted in the first edition but gaining in prominence, where sources are

  disguised as “grassroots” social activists but are actually guided and funded by corpo-

  rate interests.2 New exposés of propaganda activity by insurance and pharmaceutical

  interests have also appeared. Whistle-blowers such as Wendell Potter deserve credit

  for revealing, from the first-hand perspective of his own involvement, some canny and

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  conniving methods used to dupe the public.3 Sometimes the techniques involved are not totally new, and we do well to remember that a rise in the manufacture of public

  opinion was already attracting notice in the late nineteenth century.4 Modern technol-

  ogy has provided unparalleled opportunities for surveillance and data-mining, carried

  out with questionable legality as revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. As he foresaw

  would likely happen, mainstream media have focused not so much on the legality and

  constitutionality of the government-supported intrusiveness he exposed but on his

  own alleged illegality in exposing the practices.

  The forces supporting and opposing Snowden and other leakers such as Bradley

  Manning and Julian Assange are providing a political landscape reminiscent in some

  ways of the celebrated case of Alfred Dreyfus in France in the early 1900s. The clash

  between the desire to uphold and protect the appearances of government probity at al

  costs clashed then as now with the desire for both procedural and substantial individual

  justice. Propaganda plays a vital part of this clash, and hopefully this new edition will

  be useful for attuning readers to the ways it will exercise its influence in the months

  and years ahead. Museums and curators have an important role to play in educating the

  public, and the British Library exhibition in the summer of 2013, “Propaganda: Power

  and Persuasion,” curated by David Welch, is the most recent commendable example.5

  Another new term, “truthiness,” has been added to the lexicon appropriate to

  propaganda analysis by comedian Stephen Colbert to capture what appears to be an

  increasing indifference to exact, objective truth. That which is “truthy” has the appear-

  ance of truth and accords well with deep, human, emotionally guided feelings about

  how the truth ought to be, and whether it is in fact so or not is not particularly impor-

  tant either to the propagator of the “truth” or to the recipient.6 Linking this phenom-

  enon to neo-conservatives may seem tendentious, but there is with the “Tea Party”

  group a systematic, organized attempt to provide an unscholarly, myth-saturated view

  of the origin of the United States of America in its rebellion against British rule, all to

  justify reduction of taxes on the rich and reduction of government services to the pub-

  lic, while generally remaining silent about huge expenditures favouring the military-

  industrial complex (or the intelligence-industrial complex, a name some have suggested

  in the wake of Snowden’s revelations). An episode in the video “Outfoxed” shows Bill

  O’Reilly misrepresenting, even long after the event, the views of guest Jeremy Glick,

  who appeared on his Fox News talk show in 2003. Glick lost his father in the attack

  on the World Trade Center and yet opposed the US military attacks on Afghanistan

  and Iraq. O’Reilly sought to discredit him, appealing to the desire to seek retribution

  against those responsible for 9/11, ostensibly out of respect for Glick’s father. But Glick

  pointed out that the United States had earlier supported terrorists such as Osama bin

  Laden against the Soviet Union and took exception to what he regarded as O’Reilly’s

  misuse of his father’s name to bolster his (O’Reilly’s) right-wing militarism.7

  New and significant information has led to a re-writing of the section on the

  1917 Corpse Factory story, focusing still more on involvement by Lord Northcliffe’s

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  newspapers in the deception, and less on that of Major-General John Charteris.

  Practical restraints on the amount that can be added to this edition have meant that

  some of the latter material has had to be trimmed. Publication of my article in the online

  MercatorNet, containing updated information on this story, led to useful, ongoing col-

  laboration with Polish scholar Joachim Neander,8 and the version here has benefited

  from his well-informed comments.

  Critics of the first edition have indicated that the section on the ethics of lying,

  deception, and propaganda needed further development. An attempt has been made

  here to respond to that suggestion, to the extent that space constraints allowed.

  An important quotation somehow was omitted from the first edition: G.K.

  Chesterton’s observation, made in 1909, is centrally important for understanding how

  propaganda and truth do not stan
d in any simple, direct relationship of opposition.

  What he wrote is as important and as applicable today, though one needs to make

  allowances for his rhetorical form of expression:

  [News] may be so selected as to give a totally false picture of the place or topic under

  dispute. Selection is the fine art of falsity. Tennyson put it very feebly and inade-

  quately when he said that the blackest of lies is the lie that is half a truth. The blackest

  of lies is the lie that is entirely a truth. Once give me the right to pick out anything

  and I shall not need to invent anything.9

  Unless and until people understand and take to heart the important truth con-

  nected with Chesterton’s observation, they will always be prey to those who own,

  control, or know how to manipulate the mass media. The power of Rupert Murdoch’s

  worldwide media consists in its ability to determine what facts or fancies shall

  occupy the attention of his very large audiences. This can include reporting in detail

  the failings of disfavoured political candidates while giving scant attention to those

  of favoured candidates. Conversely, one reports extensively on the good points of

  favoured candidates while ignoring those of the disfavoured. In that way the media

  create false impressions without needing to utter a single demonstrable falsehood.

  Politicians are aware of this power and recognize the importance of media support,

  the obtaining of which may require an understanding that there will be no interfer-

  ence with the relevant media empire’s plans for expansion if the politician is elected.

  The amount of updating in this new edition, while extensive, is still short of ideal.

  Where I thought that any updating would soon be overtaken by new events, espe-

  cially regarding controls over media, I have sometimes left the out-dated material as

  is, serving the purpose of at least setting out the problems and issues that tend not to

  change very much over time, even if their specific application changes—as with the

  development of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. These constantly changing

  applications are monitored by other writers and are often well reported in some of the

  websites listed at the end, such as PRWatch, FAIR, and the like.

  PREFACE To THE SEConD EDITIon xvii

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  Once again, I would like to thank all those people who have provided helpful

  comments in the ten years since this book was first published, above all my wife,

  Elaine, my brother John Tepper Marlin, and other members of my family. Thanks

  to J.C.S. Wernham (now, unfortunately, deceased) for correcting an error. Thanks

  also to two anonymous respondents to a Broadview survey who provided excellent

  feedback, and to several anonymous referees for helpful comments on articles I have

  written related to the content of this book. I am very grateful to the many librar-

  ians at Carleton University and elsewhere who have been so forthcoming with their

  assistance. My thanks extend to the great many former students, teaching assistants,

  teachers, friends, and colleagues who have been very generous in the way they have

  alerted me to new sources of propaganda-related material, or expressed worries about

  related ethical issues, or have helped me in innumerable other ways. Naming all of

  them would be impossible, and naming a few would involve a degree of arbitrariness,

  so I will limit myself here to this general appreciation.

  I owe a special debt of thanks to Broadview’s Stephen Latta and Betsy Struthers,

  the former for prodding me to better efforts through sustained, astute, and very help-

  ful questioning, and the latter for her thoroughness in making everything more read-

  able and stylistically consistent as well as occasionally suggesting additional sources.

  Remaining deficiencies are, of course, my own responsibility.

  Randal Marlin

  Ottawa, Canada

  notes

  1 From Gustave Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995). Gilbert interviewed Goering in his cell at Nuremberg during the war crimes trials early in 1946.

  2 The term is a metaphor derived from the use of artificial grass used for professional football fields, one brand of which is named AstroTurf. The name is used generically to apply to such fake grass and metaphorically to apply to fake grassroots organizations, those that appear to be spontaneous expressions of the common people but that are in fact manipulated. An excellent documentary exposing hidden connections between the Tea Party and other groups opposed to government regulation, has been made by the Australian filmmaker Takeshi (Taki) Oldham in 2010, titled (Astro) Turf Wars, also renamed The Billionaires’ Tea Party (Larrikan Films, 2010).

  3 See Wendell Potter, Deadly Spin (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010).

  4 See Blanchard Jerrold, “The Manufacture of Public Opinion,” Nineteenth Century XIII (June 1883): 1080–92.

  5 See David Welch, Propaganda: Power and Persuasion (London: British Library, 2013).

  6 Nicely illustrated in Gerald J. Erion, “Amusing Ourselves to Death with Television News,” in The Daily Show and Philosophy, ed. Jason Holt (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007). See especially note 5, page 14.

  7 Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, directed by Robert Greenwald, MoveOn.org, 2004.

  8 See and
  uottawa.ca/1002/v3i2_neander%20and%20marlin.pdf>.

  9 G.K. Chesterton, “Distortions in the Press,” Il ustrated London News, November 1909. As an example, he notes: “If I am free to report this planet to the Man on the Moon as being inhabited by scorpions and South African millionaires, I will undertake to leave the facts to speak for themselves. I will undertake to create a false impression solely by facts.”

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  CHAPTER 1

  Why Study Propaganda?

  CHAPTER 1: WHY

  STUDY

  PROPAGANDA?

  InTRoDUCTIon

  Out of the last two centuries a globally interconnected, mass-mediated society has

  emerged. The events of the twentieth century in particular have shown the enor-

  mous power, for good or evil, possessed by those who directly control or know how

  to manipulate the mass media. World War I left millions of soldiers killed on the

  battlefield. Why? Both sides seemed to think God was on their side. Britain pioneered

  techniques of propaganda during that war, techniques imitated by other countries and

  adapted in some cases to commercial interests.1In the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazi Party

  rose to power, riding a tide of nationalism and anti-Semitism, which it promoted as

  well as exploited. Hitler quite explicitly outlined the central role propaganda was to

  play in his party’s successes. Lenin came to power through his understanding of the

  importance of communications with the masses and of harnessing their interests to

  his own ends. Leaders of democracies opposing these dictators, such as US President

  Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, were also

  highly skilled at influencing public opinion. Not only in politics, but in the commer-

  cial realm as well, sophisticated techniques of manipulation have been used to market

  goods, promote corporate images, and generally protect the interests of the privileged.
r />   Advertising and public relations have become pervasive in the industrialized world.

  It is fair to say, as some have, that this has been an “age of propaganda.” Techniques

  of persuasion are everywhere used, for the reason that, to a large extent, they work.

  Once we recognize the power of propaganda, we need to ask whether its exercise

  is consistent with those democratic ideals to which lip-service is commonly accorded.

  Should we not want to study the techniques used so that truth gets a fair hearing? One

  1

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  excellent reason for studying propaganda is to try to avoid being led into war unnecessarily. As long as some powerful groups within society stand to benefit from war, we

  need to be vigilant against the possibility that they may encourage a military solution

  to world problems when, perhaps, diplomatic or other less costly means have not been

  entirely exhausted. It seems almost axiomatic that, if two sides go to war believing in the

  rightness and justice of their cause, then there has been a failure to communicate fully

  the position of the other side.

  The price of freedom, it has been well said, is eternal vigilance. Others go fur-

  ther and claim that freedom must be purchased through blood, through sacrifices of

  a military kind to guard against armed aggressors. However, resort to military power

  can be misplaced and self-defeating if the enemy has been misrepresented and if the

  grounds for intervention are based on misinformation, disinformation, or just plain

  misunderstanding. To avoid repeating mistakes of the past, an alert citizenry today

  should take the trouble to learn how easy it can be for a powerful minority to manipu-

  late information to win the support—or the indifference—of the majority towards its

  actions. People need to be sensitized to these methods if they are to guard adequately

  against such manipulation.

  There are occasions when it is right to be alarmist about propaganda. At the turn

  of the century a cold eye seemed more appropriate, but experience in 2002 and 2003

  with US President George W. Bush and his administration’s propaganda leading to

  the disastrous war in Iraq gives us ample reason for worry today. Without solid evi-