Download Propaganda and war

1:Propaganda and war by Giles Ward-Best
Introduction
The purpose of my research is to find out whether or not world media of the
twentieth and twenty-first century employ the tactic of propaganda
surrounding war situations, wittingly or unwittingly on behalf of the
governments. Also whether the use of the media is effective in controlling the
minds of the populace before, during and after major conflicts between
countries.
To begin with I shall try and explain propaganda and its purposes, then I shall
take a more in-depth look at some of the wars in which propaganda tactics
have been adopted by the governments at the time, these will include the Gulf
war, the Kossovo conflict, and the first and second world wars.
Some of the questions I shall try to answer by way of text content, will be
whether or not the modern wars waged by the west are wholly justified. Is the
public being mislead over reasons for war and are we to trusting of the stories
we are fed by the media.
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Propaganda and war
1:1 The meaning of propaganda
The organised spreading of doctrine, true or false information, opinions, etc,
especially to bring about change or reform; an association or scheme for
doing this; the information, etc spread, a roman catholic committee, founded
in 1622, responsible for foreign missions and the training of missionaries.
1:2 Elements of propaganda
Probably all conflicts are fought on at least two grounds: the battlefield and
the minds of the people via propaganda the “good guys” and the “bad guys”
can often both be guilty of misleading their populace with distortions,
exaggerations, subjectivity, inaccuracy and even out right lies, in order to
receive support and a sense of legitimacy.
Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, by using exaggeration,
misrepresentation and even lies about the issues to gain support.
Those who promote a negative image of the “enemy” may often reinforce it
with rhetoric about the righteousness of themselves; the attempt is to muster
up support and nurture the belief that what is to be done is in the beneficial
interest of everyone. Often, the principles used to demonise the enemy are
not used to judge the self, which can lead to accusations of double standards
and hypocrisy.
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Common tactics in propaganda

Using selective stories that come over as wide covering and objective.

Partial facts, or historic context.

Reinforcing reasons and motivations to act due to threats on security.

Narrow sources of “experts” to provide insights into the situation (for
example, the main stream media will typically interview retired military
personnel for many conflict related issues, or treat official government
sources as fact, rather than just one perspective that needs to be verified
and researched).

Demonising the enemy who do not fit the picture of what is right.

Judgements are often made while, the boundary of discourse itself, or the
framework within which the opinions are formed are often not discussed.
The narrow focus then helps to serve the interests of the propagandists.
Professor Johann Galtung, a professor of peace studies, expresses twelve
points of concern where journalism often goes wrong when dealing with
conflicts and violence.
Decontextualizing violence: focusing on the irrational without looking at the
reasons for unresolved conflicts and polarisation.
Dualism: reducing the number of parties in a conflict to two, when often more
are involved. Stories that just focus on internal developments often ignore
such outside or “external” forces as foreign governments and transnational
companies.
Manicheanism: portraying one side as good and demonising the other as
“evil”
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Armageddon: presenting violence as inevitable, omitting alternatives.
Focusing on individual acts of violence while avoiding structural causes, like
poverty, government neglect and military or police repression.
Confusion: focusing only on the conflict arena (i.e., the battlefield or location
of violent incidents) but not on the forces and factors that influence the
violence.
Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus never explaining why there are
acts of revenge and spirals of violence.
Failure to explore the causes of escalation and the impact of media coverage
itself.
Failure to explore the goals of outside interventionists, especially big powers.
Failure to explore peace proposals and offer images of peaceful outcomes.
Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with actual peace.
Omitting reconciliation: conflicts tend to remerge if attention is not paid to
efforts to heal fractured societies. When news about attempts to resolve
conflicts are absent, fatalism is reinforced. That can help engender even more
violence, when people have no images or information about possible peaceful
outcomes and the promise of healing.
(Emphasis added) Danny Schechter, covering violence:, July 18, 2001
1:3 Preparing a nation
Award winning investigative journalist, Phillip Knightley, points out four stages
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In preparing a nation for war, in an article published in the Guardian.
The crisis; (the reporting of a crisis which negotiations appear unable to
resolve. Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation.
The media reports this as “we’re on the brink of war”, or “war is inevitable”,
etc.)
The demonisation of the enemy’s leader; (comparing the leader to Hitler is a
good start because of the instant images that Hitler’s name provokes!)
The demonisation of the enemy as individuals; (for example, to suggest the
enemy is insane.)
Atrocities. (Even making up stories to whip up and strengthen emotional
reactions.)
Knightley also writes: “one difficulty is that the media have little or no memory.
War correspondents have short working lives and there is no tradition or
means for passing on their knowledge and experience. The military, on the
hand, is an institution and goes on forever. The military learnt a lot from
Vietnam and these days plans its media strategy with as much attention as its
military strategy.” –Phillip Knightley, the Guardian, March 20, 2000
1:4 Four levels of propaganda
According to Arthur Siegel a social science professor at York University in
Toronto, there are four levels of propaganda.
The first level is the big lie, adapted by Hitler and Stalin. The state controlled
Egyptian press has been spreading a big lie, saying the world trade centre
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Was attacked by Israel to embarrass Arabs.
The second layer says, ‘It doesn’t have to be the truth so long as its plausible.’
The third strategy is to tell the truth but withhold the other sides point of view.’
The forth and most productive is to tell the truth, the good, the bad, the losses
and the gains.
Governments in western society take the last three steps. The avoid the big
lie which nobody here will swallow.
Beth Gillin, the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 21, 2001
1:5 The positive and the negative
According to many social scientists war propaganda is more than just lies
and hidden truths, its actually an art and scientific process, for which a great
deal of planning is actually required, and also this kind of distortion to the truth
isn’t just restricted to use by the more extreme governments of the world.
When a spokesperson for a government speaks to the media on the issues of
a current conflict, the words for the speech will have been more than likely
chosen very carefully in order to strike home the right messages among the
populace, here are a collection of those positive and negative words.
When speaking of the enemy

“Compassion” is not enough.

Anti-(issue)flag, child, jobs
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
Betray

Coercion

Collapse

Consequences

Corruption

Crisis

Decay

Deeper

Destroy

Destructive

Devour

Endanger

Failure

Greed

Hypocrisy

Ideological

Impose

Incompetent

Insecure

Liberal

Lie

Limit(s)

Pathetic

Permissive attitude

Radical

Self serving

Sensationalists

Shallow

Sick

They/them
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
Threaten

Traitors

Unionised bureaucracy

Urgent

Waste
When speaking of themselves or their policies

Active(ly)

Activist

Building

Candid(ly)

Care(ing)

Challenge

Change

Children

Choice/Choose

Commitment

Common sense

Compete

Confident

Conflict

Control

Courage

Crusade

Debate

Dream

Duty

Empower(ment)

Fair
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
Family

Freedom

Hard work

Help

Humane

Incentive

Initiative

Lead

Learn

Legacy

Liberty

Moral

Opportunity

Passionate

Peace

Principle

Prosperity

Protect

Proud/pride

Reform

Rights

Strength

Success

Tough

Truth

Unique

Vision

We/us/our
This list was compiled by the (GOPAC) the Newt Gingrich’s political action
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Committee, in a pamphlet entitled – language, a key mechanism of control.
2: The Gulf war
There can be many different propaganda tactics employed by governments
during conflicts, during the Gulf war with Iraq the US and the UK dominated
the offensive backed by the UN.
Sanctions
On august 6th 1990 economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq, it was on this
date that two or more PSYOPS (Psychological warfare operations) battalions
of the US army were actively commissioned for wartime duty. They were
instructed to compose leaflets of a strategic kind, which would include safe
conduct passes with both coercive and threatening texts. To compose such
anti-Iraq literature in Arabic required the co-operation of the Kuwaitis and
Saudi Arabians, as it was absolutely necessary to ensure that any texts they
intended to use did not offend Arab culture or in any manner detract from the
determination of the Arab and other members of the coalition to carry out the
declared wishes of the united nations with regard to the invasion, occupation
and retaking of Kuwait.
Secret deals
Three secret directives involving propaganda against Iraq were signed by
president Bush for and on behalf of the main protagonists, including the
Kuwait resistance body. The composition and the text of the tactical leaflets
were decided by US and Saudi teams and would later be used when the
hostilities began.
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Surrender passes
Amongst the literature to be dropped by air within the occupied Kuwait were
surrender passes. There were eight or nine basic types of surrender pass,
one of which was a facsimile 25-dinar banknote in its original colour. (See
fig.1&2) It was used to attract the attention of the Iraqi soldiers as they fell to
the ground. On the back of each banknote was a message informing the
soldier either how to surrender, his treatment as a prisoner-of-war, an antiSaddam caricature or information that the Iraqi currency was already
debased. The banknotes are believed to have been printed in Turkey. An
estimated thirty million leaflets of all kinds are officially alleged to have been
printed and disseminated during the short war.
(Fig 1) 25-dinar banknote
(Fig 2) Anti-Saddam caricature
on reverse of banknote
The caption reads “I have carried you for 11 years. I have no more strength to
carry you any more.” The sign reads “Kuwait”
Threats
At the same time as being offered the opportunity to surrender to the coalition
forces, Iraqi soldiers were being showered with leaflets threatening them with
the dire results of being bombed if they did not shift position. One leaflet used
to intimidate them had the outline of an aerial bomb and had the message
“this is a demonstration. It could have been a real bomb” (See fig 3) but one of
these ‘outline bomb’ types, represent the BLU-82 aerial bomb, the size of a
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VW Beetle car and weighing seven tons.
(Fig 3) Aerial bomb leaflet
According to western reports in the field, the safe conduct passes were very
sought after and desertions began almost as soon as the west became
involved after the occupation of Kuwait City. There has since been no mention
of the millions of post cards that were dropped, so this information can be
considered as pure propaganda.
2:1 Media and Iraq
During the gulf war the US/UK government had been accused of withholding
information, which meant that the media portrayal would not have given a
complete picture.
The often presented fact that there were no casualties led to claims of a new
type of war that could be successfully fought, it was often not clarified that
there were a lot of Iraqi casualties and probably over half of them civilians.
When 30 to 50 people are killed together by the enemy the same media will
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describe that as a massacre.
As an example of media manipulation, here is a quote from an article on
journalism and reporting on peace and conflict.
The typical justification tactics used by proponents of military intervention
brought us entirely false reports in 1990, that Iraqi soldiers were killing babies
in Kuwait city by switching off hospital incubators – brought to us by
Washington PR firm Hill and Knowlton. Maggie O’Kane whose investigation
into media manipulations leading up to and during the Gulf war of 1991 won
the Cameron award when published in the Guardian and was broadcast on
channel 4, recounted her meeting with nurses at the hospital who were utterly
mystified by these stories.
The source turned out to be the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Kuwaiti
ambassador to Washington, who was presented to the US congress as a
nurse but, in fact, had not been to Kuwait in years. As O’Kane says: there is
always a dead babies story. The effect is to demonise the enemy and create a
sense of urgency, which admits no time for diplomacy.
3: The Kosovo conflict
NATO bombings on Serbia started on March 24th 1999 and has been
accompanied by mainstream media one-sidedness and lack of objectivity or a
real look at alternatives. And now according to some new reports on what
happened, new evidence emerged confirming that the US deliberately set out
to thwart the Rambouillet peace talks in France in order to provide a trigger for
Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia.
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A senior US State department official has said that the US had ‘set the bar to
high’ for the Serbs and that they needed some bombing and yet the
mainstream media has ignored this
Of all the mass graves and other massacre sites that the western media used
to drum up support for the NATO campaign, subsequent investigations by
various western institutions found none of them.
It is also remarkable that NATO has achieved a peace treaty that is almost the
same as what was proposed before the bombing began except it has been
very costly to human life and the environment. In fact, both NATO and
Milosevic have actually given up some of the aspects of what the original
Rambouillet accord demanded.
3:1 Claims that are not verified
Western mainstream media has been often criticised for its one sided
reporting of the situation, but also the way in which it trusted official sources,
especially after the missed lessons taught before, during and after the gulf
war; in which the media either purposely mislead the public or were grossly
mislead by official sources.
Michael Parenti political scientist and author describes his view of Nato’s
agenda. “In sum, NATO leaders used vastly inflated estimates of murdered
Kosovo Albanians as a pretext to intrude on the internal affairs of a sovereign
nation, destroy much of its infrastructure and social production, badly damage
its ecology, kill a substantial amount of citizens, and invade and occupy a
large portion of its territory in which can only be termed a war of aggression.”
–Michael Parenti 2000
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The Serb media also came out with claims that could not be verified, but while
the west’s media treated the Serbs claims with due suspicion, NATO claims
were just taken without any research into their validity, one of Nato’s claims
was that the bombing of the Serb television stations had been done to stop
the Serb/Milosevic propaganda to the Serb people. Unfortunately it also
meant that NATO effects of bombing were also prevented from being
reported.
Though still the most questionable claim from NATO was that of the mass
graves. “On April 19th, the US State department states that up to 500,000
Kossovar Albanians were missing or feared dead. On May 16 th US defence
secretary William S Cohen said that up to 100,000 Albanian men in Kosovo
had vanished and may have been killed. On November 11th a New York times
article reported that after five months of investigation and exhumation of 195
most serious grave sites, reported to hold thousands of bodies, they had not
found even a fraction of the reported 500,000 or 100,000 bodies. Their total
count was 2,108 bodies throughout the province. They found no mass
graves.” –Sara Flounders, Censored 2000, p.43
There are of course questions and concerns about weather bodies from mass
graves had in some way been hidden, moved or destroyed, and there have
been claims of this, but again they are claims that haven’t yet been all verified.
One of the main issues here is how the media repeated these claims in the
lead-up to the war, in essence, unwittingly or not, drumming up support for
military action.
Similarities
Both conflicts mentioned have certain similarities, in the way mainstream
media was flooded with stories of the enemy, and for their apparent lack of
interest for analysing the situations beyond what they were told officially.
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4: The first world war
Of course propaganda in war isn’t a new phenomena, it has been probably
used world-wide since the beginning of time, and although television wasn’t
yet a tool for it, during the first world war propaganda was advertised on
billboard posters, in newspapers and on the radio.
One of the biggest strategies during this war was for recruitment, unlike the
previous wars mentioned that were by and large fought from the air, the first
world war was fought from the trenches, so all sides involved needed constant
fresh supplies of men to run from the trenches towards the enemy.
Posters, art and postcard were used to promote and glorify young men going
to war for their country (see figs 4and5)
(Fig 4) English postcard
(Fig 5) German postcard
some other examples of this is in posters, one poster shows an old man and a
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lady saying “Go, its your duty lad” and another shows a middle aged man with
his daughter on his knee, and his young son playing with his toy soldiers, the
caption says “Daddy what did YOU do in the great war” these images were
maybe used to utilise the guilt and humiliation of a father not being able to tell
his children what he did in the war.
4:1 Anti German propaganda
A particularly effective strategy for demonising Germans was the use of
atrocity stories, it has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict
known to man, unlike the pacifist, who argues that all wars are brutal, the
atrocity story implies that war is only brutal when practised by the enemy,
after the war, Edward Bernays, who directed CPI propaganda efforts in Latin
America, openly admitted that his colleagues used alleged atrocities to
provoke public outcry against Germany.
Although anti German propaganda fuelled support for the war it also
contributed to intolerance from the American home front, where dachshunds
were re-named liberty dogs, German measles were re-named liberty measles,
and the city university of New York reduced by one credit every course in
German. Fourteen states banned the speaking of German; such was the
power of the propaganda.
5: Questions to today’s public
To try and get some of the views of others I set out three questions and put
them to fifteen different people in short interviews. My first question was, if the
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name Saddam Hussein is mentioned what media story do you think of?, these
are the answers I got; the occupation of Kuwait; killing his own people;
building weapons of mass destruction; using a western child for an interview;
poisoning of the Kurds, and the burning of the oil fields.
My second question was, when our nation goes to war do you think we are
being told the whole story, half the story, or a different story?, of the fifteen
asked, nine said we were being told half the story, and six said we were
getting a different story, nobody at all thought we were being given the whole
story.
My third and final question was, is a Government justified to lie even though
the truth may damage its cause?, from the same fifteen people five said yes
the believed it was justified, and ten said no they weren’t justified to lie.
6: Conclusion
The main problem I found during this research is that when dealing with
official half truths or lies, was the fact that officially they would never admit
them, which subsequently means that the sources relied upon are from part
investigation and part speculation, and although in this paper I have tried to
balance the view of propaganda, anyone who looks for and speaks of official
propaganda, may also be accused of using anti-establishment propaganda
themselves.
One of my main findings is that in contrast to the first world war, were the
propaganda was seen as acceptable, and the people felt the cause was
greater than the questions that needed asking, the more modern media fought
wars, are more so under question with regards to their justness and the
misleading of information. From the interviews I carried out it really didn’t
surprise me to find that of the fifteen people I asked, nobody believed we were
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told the whole truth about conflicts.
My own view is that the people we pay to represent us should be far more
accountable for the truth. It is also possible that this research paper itself may
be viewed and deemed as propaganda, which is for the reader to decide.
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7: Bibliography
J.A.C Brown. Techniques of persuasion: from propaganda to brain washing,
penguin 1963, ISBN 0140206043, 303.38
D. Welch. Propaganda and the German cinema 1933-1945, Oxford U.P, 1985
ISBN 0198219741, 791.430943
D. Birt. Something to sell: propaganda, Longman, 1978, ISBN 05823981,
302.2
L.A.Monk. Britain 1945-1970, G. Bell & sons Ltd, 1976, ISBN 0713518979,
941.85
The Chambers dictionary, Chambers Harrup publishers Ltd, 2001, ISBN
0550100083
Http://www.btinternet.com/~rrnotes/psywarsoc/fleaf/gulfapp.htm
Http://www.nara.gov/exhall/powers/powers.htm
http://www.ucsc.edu/currants/terroristcrisis/propaganda.htm
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Contents
1: Propaganda and war (introduction)
Page 1
1:2 The meaning of propaganda
Page 2
1:3 Elements of propaganda
Page 2
1:4 Preparing a nation
Page 4
1:5 Four levels of propaganda
Page 5
1:6 The positive and the negative
Page 6
2: The Gulf war
Page 10
2:1 Media and Iraq
Page 12
3: The Kosovo conflict
Page 13
3:1 Claims that are not verified
Page 14
4: The first world war
Page 16
4:1 Anti German propaganda
Page 17
5: Questions to today’s public
Page 17
6: Conclusion
Page 18
7: Bibliography
Page 20
Abstract
“ When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty” –Arthur Ponsoby, British
diplomat and author.
Research
Paper
Access 2001
Propaganda
and war
By Giles Ward-Best