propaganda american style

8/8/2019 Propaganda American Style

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Propaganda: Nobody Does It Better Than America.

Paul Weber

O ver the years, I have had the privilege of meeting and havingdiscussions with people who came to America from countriesknown for their adherence to totalitarianism: China, Russia, and

former east European satellites of the Soviet Union. When wediscussed how the state managed to control public opinion undertotalitarianism, these people would usually produce a weary,knowledgeable, cynical smile and point out that propaganda inthose countries was really done quite incompetently. If you reallywant to know propaganda, they said, you need to study Americanpropaganda technique. According to them, it is, undeniably, the best in the world.

"How can that be?" I asked, honestly puzzled.

Propaganda in those countries was too obvious, they told me. Assoon as you read the first sentence you knew it was a bunch of propaganda, so you didnt even bother to read it. If you heard aspeech, you knew in the first few words that it was propaganda, andyou tuned it out.

"But," I then queried, "How do you know when its just propaganda?"

The expatriates explained that bad propaganda uses obviousterminology that anyone can see through. Anyone hearing thephrase "capitalist running dogs", knows hes listening toincompetent propaganda and tunes it out. Lousy propaganda, theseknowledgeable but jaded individuals would tell me, appeals to anabstract theory, to a rational thesis that can be disproved. Eventhough communists had total control of the press, the people just tuned it out (except for those who were the most mentally

defective). Most people, they assured me, just went about their livesas best they could, paid lip service to the state, and just tried tokeep out of the way of the secret police. But hardly anyone reallybelieved the stuff. The result, after many decades of suffering, wasthe eventual collapse of the old order once The Great Leaderexpired, whether his name was Brezhnev, Mao, or Tito.

American propaganda, however, is much cleverer. American

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propaganda, they patiently explained, relies entirely on emotionalappeals. It doesnt depend on a rational theory that can bedisproved: it appeals to things no one can object to.

American propaganda had its birth, so far as I can tell, in theadvertising industry. The pioneers of advertisinga truly loathsomebunchlearned early on that people would respond to purelyemotional appeals. Abstract theory and logical argument do nothingto spur sales. However, appeals to sexiness, to pride of ownership,to fear of falling behind the neighbors are the stock in trade of advertising executives. A man walking down the street withbeautiful women hanging on his arms is not a logical argument, but it sure sells after-shave. A woman in a business suit with abriefcase, strolling along with swaying hips, assuring us she can"bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, but never let you forget youre a man" really sells the perfume.

Lets take a moment and analyze the particular emotions that thisexecrable ad appealed to. If you guessed fear, you win the prize.Women often have a fear of inadequacy, particularly in thisconfused age when they are expected to raise brilliant kids, run asuccessful business, and be unfailingly sexy, all the time. That sillygoalfoisted upon us by feminists and popular cultureisimpossible to reach. But maybe theres hope if you buy the right perfume! Arguments from intimidation and appeals to fear arepowerful propaganda tools.

American advertising and propaganda has been refined over theyears into a malevolent science, based on the assumption that most people react, not to ideas, but to naked emotion. When I worked at an ad agency many years ago, I learned that the successfulagencies know how to appeal to emotions: the stronger and baser,the better. The seven deadly sins, ad agency wags often say, are thekey to selling products. Fear, envy, greed, hatred, and lust: these arethe basic tools for good propaganda and effective advertising. By

far, the most powerful motivating emotionthe top,most-sought-after copy writers will tell you, in an unguardedmomentis fear, followed closely by greed.

Good propaganda appeals to neither logic nor morality. Moralityand ethics are the death of sales. This is why communist propaganda actually hastened the collapse of communism: thecreatures running the Commie Empire thought they should appealto morality by calling for people to engage in sacrifice for thegreater good. They gave endless, droning speeches about theinevitably of communist triumph, based on the Hegelian dialectic.Not only were they wrong: their approach to selling their (virtually


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unsellable) theory was not clever enough. American propagandists(we can be jingoistically proud to say) would have been able tomaintain the absurd social experiment called communism a littlelonger. They would have scrapped all the theory and focused onappealing images. Though the Commies tried to do this throughhuge, flag-waving rallies, the disparity between their alleged ideals

and the reality they created was just too great.One tyrant who did take American propaganda to heart was

Adolph Hitler. Hitler learned to admire American propagandathrough a young American expatriate who described to him, inglowing detail, how Americans enjoyed the atmosphere at footballgames. This American expatriate, with the memorable name of Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstngl, told the Fhrer how Americans could bewhipped up into a frenzy through blaring music, group cheers, andchants against the enemy. Hitler, genius of evil as he was,immediately saw the value in this form of propaganda andincorporated it into his own rise to power. Prior to Hitler, Germanpolitical rhetoric was dry, intellectual, and uninspiring. Hitlerlearned the value of spectacle in whipping up the emotions; the

famed Nuremberg rallies were really little more than glorified football halftime shows. Rejecting boring, intellectual rhetoric,Hitler learned to appeal to deeply emotional but meaninglessphrases, like the appeal to "blood and soil." The German peoplebought it wholesale. Hitler also called for blind loyalty to the"Fatherland," which eerily echoes our own new cabinet level post of "Homeland" Security.

If you study Nazi propaganda, you will be struck by how well it appeals to gut-level emotions and imagesbut not thought. You willsee pictures of elderly German women hugging fresh-faced youngbabies, with captions about the bright future the Fhrer has brought to German. In fact, German propaganda borrowed the Americantechnique of relying, not so much on words, but on images alone:pictures of handsome German soldiers, sturdy peasants in nativecostume, and the like. Take a look at any American car commercial

featuring rugged farmers tossing bales of hay into the backs of theirpickups, and youve seen the source from which the Nazis borrowedtheir propaganda techniques.

The Germans have a well-deserved reputation for producing a lot of really smart people, but this did not prevent them from beingcompletely vulnerable to American-style propaganda. Amazingly, anation raised on the greatest classical music, the profoundest scientists, the greatest poets, actually fell for propaganda that ledthem into a hopeless, two-front war against most of the world. Beingsmart is, in itself, no defense against skilled American propaganda,


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unless you know and understand the techniques, so you can resist them.

American politicians learned, early in the twentieth century, that using emotional sales techniques won elections. Furthermore, theylearned that emotional appeals got them what they wanted as theyadvanced towards their long-term goal of becoming Masters of theUniverse. From this, we get our modern lexicon of political speech,carefully crafted to appeal to powerful emotions, with either noappeal to reason, or (better yet) a vague appeal to something that sounds foggily reasonable, but is so obscure that no one will botherto dissect it.

Franklin Roosevelt understood this, which is why he called forSocial Security. Security is an emotional appeal: no one is against security, are they? Roosevelt backed up his campaign with amasterful appeal to emotions: images of happy, elderlygrandparents smiling while hugging their grandchildren, witheverything in the world going right because of Social Security. Allkinds of government programs were sold on the basis of appealingimages and phrases. Roosevelt even appealed to Americastraditional love of freedom, spinning that term by multiplying it intothe new Four Freedoms, including Freedom from Want and Freedom

from Fear. Well, what heartless human being could possibly beagainst that? The Four Freedoms were promoted with images of parents tucking their children cozily into bed, and a happy familygathered around a Thanksgiving dinner, obviously free from want.The campaign was also based on that most powerful of all sellingemotions: fear. If you dont support Social Security, the adssuggested, you will live your last years in utter destitution.

Putzi Hanfstngl, viewing Roosevelts evil brilliance from NaziGermany, was probably jealous.

American advertising executives learned the value of presentinga single image or slogan, and repeating it over and over again until it became ingrained in the publics consciousness. Thus we are allaware that Ivory Soap is so pure that it floats: a point that has beenrepeated for the better part of a century. Im not sure why I shouldbe impressed that a bar of soap floats, but on the other hand, itsnot intended that I think that far. Politicians now sell their programsthe way the advertising creeps sell soap: they dream up a sloganand repeat it over and over again. Thus we get empty slogans likeThe New Frontier, The New World Order (that one was poorlychosen; it sounds too much like an actual idea), or ReinventingGovernment (an idea that everyone should favor, except that theidea behind it really means Keeping Government the Same, only no


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one is supposed to think that far). Empty grandeur sells politicalproducts.

Both German and American politicians carried the use of bannersto new heights. Flags are impressive emotional symbols,particularly when waved by thousands of enthusiastic people: its arare individual who can resist the collective enthusiasm of thousands of his fellow human beings, cheering about theircollective greatness. Putzi Hanfstngl understood this, advisingHitler to fill his public spectacles with not just a few, but countlessthousands of swastika flags. The swastika, too, was a brilliant strokeof advertising and propaganda: it has become, in the publicconsciousness, the official emblem of Nazism, even though it hadnothing to do with Germany. In fact, swastikas were used by ancient Hindus and American tribes, but Im not aware of it being used byanyone in Germany prior to Hitler.

Now observe how Americans in the current crisis have taken todisplaying huge flags on their cars. Flags are not rationalarguments; they are instruments for whipping up the Madness of Crowds. Observe how many Americans have, with a straight face,called for a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag desecration,oblivious to the obvious contradictions such an amendment wouldhave with the rest of the Constitution. But again, if you learn nothingelse about propaganda, learn that it must not appeal to rationality.

Politicians dont just use warm, fuzzy images to sell us on the roadto tyranny. They also need emotional appeals to intimidate theirenemies. Thus the small percentage of the population that reallydoes use thought and reason more than emotion must bedemonized. Roosevelt managed this with some masterfulpropaganda strokes. Those who opposed him were Isolationists,and Malefactors of Great Wealth! (The gut-level emotion appealedto here is envy.) Roosevelt thus showed himself to be an earlymaster of what former California Governor Jerry Brown called"buzz words"; that is, words intended to silence counter-argument by appealing to unassailable emotional images. No one is forIsolation, and almost everyone reacts to an appeal to hate anyonewho has a lot of money. The latter appeal, of course, had great power during the Great Depression, which Roosevelt managed tomaintain for the entire length of his presidency, all the while blamingothers for its evils. Was this guy an evil genius, or what?

The propaganda cleverness used in successfully brandinganti-war people as Isolationists is breathtaking. After all, a rationalperson (ah, keep in mind, thats not a common individual) realizesthat those who oppose war are the exact opposite of isolationists.


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The Old Right at the time called for peaceful, commercial relationswith all nations, based on neutrality in foreign affairs. If anything,those who oppose war and meddling in other countries affairs arethe opposite of Isolationists as they really stand for open, profitablerelationships with other countries. The people who stand for suchideas do not "sell" them by means of strictly emotional appeals, so

they tend to lose the propaganda wars. When Roosevelt succeededin whipping the country up into a war-frenzy after steering us intothe Pearl Harbor fiasco, the Old Right realized their opposition tothe war was hopeless.

The role of the government propaganda camps known as publicschools cannot be discounted in all this. Schools are not so muchcenters of learning as they are behavior conditioning camps inwhich children are taught to be unquestioningly obedient toauthority. Since reason and morality are the death of propaganda,schools busy themselves with systematically stunting studentsability to reason and think in moral terms. Because the government owns the propaganda camps, its not surprising that the beneficiaryof the propaganda is almost always the government. Americansaccept obvious absurdities because they were drilled into theirheads, year after year, in the government propaganda camps untilthey became true and unquestionable. Thus, everyone knowsRoosevelt got us out of the Great Depression, even though the worst depression years were precisely those in which he and his partycontrolled every branch of government. Everyone knows Lincolnwas a great president because he saved "government by thepeople" and freed the slaves, even though he became a war tyrant

and only freed the slaves when it was politically convenient to do so.Wilson, everyone knows, made the world "safe for democracy",evidently by instituting a draft and getting America involved in aEuropean war that was fought for reasons no one to this day can

fathom. When minds are young and pliablegovernment expertsunderstand this principleyou can fill them with nonsense that ispractically impossible to root out. Laughable falsehoods in effect become true because everyone knows them to be true.

Advertising executives learned, early on, that companies couldnot be too obvious in using their propaganda. If their agenda couldbe clearly seen, then it could also be rejected. The answer to thisproblem was the American propaganda technique of the"independent expert" and the "guy on the street." One of theseappeals to our timidity before authority, and the other to oursmugness when dealing with someone at or below our perceivedsocial level. Of course, these two techniques are really just twosides of the same coin. In product advertising, sports heroes andcelebrities are used to sell corn flakes because no one would listen


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to the president of Kellogg telling us why corn flakes are so good. Inselling detergent, plain-looking housewives are preferable to sexymodels because they look just like us. In political propaganda,"experts" are often trotted out to tell us, in convoluted, circularreasoning, why minimum wage laws are really good for us, why alittle bit of inflation is good, or why we just cant rely on the free

market for something so crucially important as education. Or, usingthe "guy on the street" approach, we are told to support idiotic warsbecause the common soldiers ("our boys"), cannot function unlessthey know we stand united behind them. If the rare sensible persontries to argue against war, he is accused of making things harder

for "our boys."

This brings us to the latest iteration of masterful AmericanPropaganda: the War on Terrorism. Any attempt to explain why theterrorists (crazed as they obviously were) felt motivated to attackthe World Trade Center is looked on as "siding with the terrorists."Indeed, Ashcroft and Bush have said, in so many words, that if youdont support them in everything they do, you stand with theterrorists. Ashcroft and Bush have evidently studied theirpropaganda lessons from World War II, when Roosevelt silenced allopposition by accusing anyone who stood against him of undermining the war effort. Anyone who suggests we should not risk World War III by invading the Middle East is alternately accusedof siding with the terrorists, of slandering the memory of those whodied, or (of course) of not "standing by our boys" in times of great need. Its easy to feel alienated in a nation of flag-wavers singingpatriotic hymns. The fact that they are marching lockstep to a world

in which the government will monitor their e-mail, snoop into theirbank accounts, and eventually throw them in jail for voicingopposition doesnt seem to bother them one bit.

Now, most libertarians or otherwise thoughtful people will react with dismay when told that most of their fellow human beings react so unthinkingly to sock-you-in-the-gut emotional propaganda.Unfortunately, most people are not capable of really thinking thingsout. Most people really do buy perfume because of the emotionalimagery. Most people really do believe the "independent expert",whether in politics or buying a car. Most people want to go with thecrowd, or follow the leader. To do otherwise requires independent thought and the willingness to be ostracized, which is anunbearable psychological burden for many.

If you want to take heart, remember that the Vietnam War endedbecause a few people just continued to speak against it, despite theoverwhelming government propaganda for it. The fact that a lot of the anti-war protesters were motivated by the wrong reasons


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(support of commies), doesnt matter in light of the fact they wereable to turn the tide. They were right, even if for the wrong reasons.If advocates of freedom continue to speak against the creepingtyranny that our masters justify on the phony grounds of the War onTerrorism, we might just be able to prevent the transition fromRepublic to Empire. The thing about propaganda is that, once it is

exposed for what it is, no one listens anymore. People tune it out, just as the slaves in Russia and China learned to tune out theirofficial propaganda.

Paul Webers novel, Transfiguration , is available at http://www.xlibris.com/Transfiguration.html.


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propaganda american style

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