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The Power of Propaganda
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/709vuidh.asp>
Warriors have been employing psychological warfare at least since Alexander
the Great. Some have had greater success than others.
by Matt Labash
12/20/2001
"PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA," Adolf Hitler once wrote, "all that
matters is
propaganda." When it came to employing propaganda, the Fuehrer was
obviously on board.
Dedicating two chapters of "Mein Kampf" to the subject, the patron of the
art that brought us
Leni Riefenstal and Joe Goebbels became a propaganda champion after
watching Germany's
trouncing in World War I, which came in no small part because of British
propaganda efforts
directed against it by the not-so-subtly named "Ministry for the
Destruction of the German
Confidence."
Because Hitler made Nazism so readily identifiable with propaganda
(Goebbels, never a light touch, assumed the title "Minister of
Propaganda"), the very word tends to give American soldiers a severe case
of the euphemisms. This I learned when visiting the U.S. Army's propaganda
specialists at Fort Bragg, North Carolina "Psyching Out the Taliban" in the
current issue of The Weekly Standard). The last century has seen propaganda
dissemination called everything from "psychological warfare" to
"information operations" to today's relatively clinical sounding
"psychological operations" ("And how did your psychological operation go?"
one colleague asked upon my return).
"I prefer not to use the word propaganda," says Lt. Col. Glenn Ayers, the
9th PSYOP battalion
commander. "It has negative connotations." So it does, but many argue it
shouldn't. Dr. Philip Taylor, in his book "Munitions of the Mind," writes
that "Propaganda itself is neither sinister nor evil. It is really no more
than the organization of methods designed to persuade people to think and
behave in a certain way, and in wartime that usually means getting them to
fight or to support the fight."
Or to stop fighting altogether. Since warfare's beginning, military
philosophers and strategists have recognized the necessity of
"psychological operations" (a subset of propaganda, since PSYOP is
generally directed at the enemy, while propaganda is additionally used on
one's own). Sun Tzu wrote, "One need not destroy one's enemy. One need only
destroy his willingness to engage." And Carl von Clausewitz wrote, "Killing
the enemy's courage is as vital as killing his troops." How forces have gone
about doing so demonstrates the full spectrum of wartime caginess and
brutality, of ingenuity and comic ineptitude.
As Taylor writes, the word "propaganda" actually comes to us from the
Vatican, which established the "Congregatio de Propaganda Fide" (The
Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith) intended to defend
Catholicism against the heretics of the Protestant Reformation. But even
before it had a name, it was widely practiced.
Retired PSYOPer Ed Rouse, keeper of psywarrior.com (the web's definitive
PSYOP history source), says that Alexander the Great was one of history's
earliest propagandists. After conquering most of the known world, his army
was stretched thin.
Forced to retreat and regroup with armies he had left behind, he realized
such an action would advertise that he was vulnerable to attack. His only
option was to intimidate opposing forces as a deterrent. So Alexander had
his armorers build oversized breastplates and helmets, ones that looked as
if they were fitted for eight-foot tall soldiers. As his army retreated,
they left the big-and-tall armor behind, scaring possible pursuers who
feared they'd be doing battle with giants. (During the Vietnam War,
American operatives tried to trick the North Vietnamese into thinking they
were facing giants of another sort, by planting foot-long condoms along the
Ho Chi Minh Trail.)
Other forces, however, exhibited less cleverness, which is not to say they
weren't effective. One Assyrian king discouraged revolts in the rebellious
city of Suru by nailing the flayed skins of revolutionaries to a pillar of
the city gate. While in the pre-leaflet era, Vlad the Impaler found that
his most effective calling card came from spearing Turkish invaders on tall
spikes.
Gutenberg and Marconi certainly didn't end wartime barbarity. But their
inventions allowed for the dissemination of propaganda through the more
sophisticated means of printed materials and radio broadcasts. The British
helped usher in PSYOP's modern era, which sought to persuade the enemy to
cease fighting, as much as it did to demoralize them while they still were.
The Brits weren't always perfect gentlemen. During World War II, they grew
especially nasty with their own P.G. Wodehouse, who they were convinced was
a Nazi collaborator. One BBC broadcaster derided Jeeves's creator, claiming
"he was throwing a cocktail party when the storm troopers clumped in on his
shallow life. They led him away, the funny Englishman, with his vast
repertoire of droll butlers, amusing young men, and comic titled fops.
Wodehouse was steadily groomed for stardom, the most disreputable stardom
in the world, the limelight of quislings."
But when it came to the Nazis themselves, the Brits were downright
thoughtful. As the Allies' blockade began to starve the Germans, they
air-dropped menus from London restaurants to show what they were missing.
BBC broadcasts into Germany went so far as to offer gratis English lessons:
"Please repeat after me. ICH BRENNE. I am burning. DU BRENNST. You are
burning. WIR BRENNEN. We burn." Rouse writes that the lesson, which the
Germans were promised would be "very useful,"
helped confirm already prevalent rumors that the British were capable of
torching the English Channel when Hitler invaded. It was a fabrication so
expertly spread, many Germans believe it to this day.
Ridicule has long been a favorite propaganda tool. The Nazis, for instance,
attempted to drive a wedge between the Allies by claiming that "Britain
will fight to the last Frenchman." Add a sex chaser, and ridicule can be
devastatingly effective, or blow up in the propagandist's face.
During World War II, Taylor writes in "Munitions of the Mind," the Brits
would interrogate captured Nazi submarine crews, soliciting the names of
customers at the brothels in Brest and Kiel. The names would then be
broadcast within Germany in order to disgrace officers of distinction, a
charge some took so seriously that they actually committed suicide. The
Axis powers
weren't quite as successful. According to Dr. Stanley Sandler, the former
command historian at the U.S. Army's Special Warfare Center and School,
Americans generally refrained from incorporating sexual themes in their
propaganda materials. (One exception, says Sandler, came against the Nazis,
when a PSYOP loudspeaker team "thoughtfully provided the names of local
girls infected with VD to a dug-in German garrison in Cherbourg.") But the
Japanese showed no such restraint. When they dropped pornographic leaflets
on sex-starved American GI's, intending to show how their girls were
getting defiled back home,
"It raised morale," says Sandler. "Our guys loved it."
Sandler, who wrote the psychological operations history "Cease Resistance,"
says many of the most unintentionally hilarious propaganda pieces tend to
have sexual themes. During the Korean war, tin-eared Commies blasted
Americans with loudspeaker broadcasts promising "We have plenty of food,
victuals, intercourse, and time off to play cards." One of the most
unpopular coalition leaflets during the Gulf War was drawn up by King
Fahd's illustrator. "(It) showed two figures walking hand-in-hand into the
sunset, flanked by Iraqi and Saudi flags," says Sandler. The message was
"'Arab brotherhood'screw Saddam. But
some U.S. troops called this 'the fag leaflet,' not realizing that men of
heterosexual persuasion (in this region) walked around holding hands."
Not being attuned to such cultural nuances can prove disastrous, which Iraq
demonstrated with its abysmal propaganda campaign. Iraqis claimed not only
that Americans had come to rape their women and spread the AIDS virus, but
also that "we would kill them and eat them," writes Richard D. Johnson in
his book "Seeds of Victory." Even more preposterous were the propaganda
broadcasts of Iraq's Baghdad Betty, who attempted to demoralize our troops
by warning them that their women back home were being seduced by Bart Simpson.
Asserting that the enemies' wives are being violated by cartoon characters
is the kind of snafu U.S. PSYOPers are particularly determined to avoid.
This is why the Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group employs 35
civilian experts, skilled in a region's language and cultural nuances. Dr.
Robert Jenks, the Group's Deputy Commanding Officer for Research, Analysis
and Civilian Affairs, says that just as in regular commercial marketing,
they have to be extremely wary of committing cross-cultural blunders.
As an example, he mentions chicken king Frank Perdue, whose ad claimed, "It
takes a tough man to create a tender chicken."
When the same ad was translated into Spanish, Jenks says, it came out, "It
takes an aroused man to create an affectionate chicken."
Oddly enough, perhaps the only thing more important than not implying that
your audience fondles farm animals is being truthful.
"You don't have to tell the whole truth, but one of the basic rules of
PSYOP is tell no lies," explains Sandler, who says it's an absolute
necessity when trying to establish credibility with a hostile foreign
audience you want to see surrender. "If we say, 'you're gonna be
well-treated,' then we use your ear for an ashtray, the word gets out."
Hewing close to the truth is why American PSYOPs has generally been more
effective than that of our counterparts. Of all the propaganda experts I
spoke with, not a single one could think of an American defection that had
been caused by our enemies' propaganda (Jane Fonda excepted). Occasionally,
of course, we shade the truth a tad. During Vietnam, Rouse writes, covert
operatives created a false fishing village on an island off South Vietnam,
where they brought blindfolded, kidnapped North Vietnamese fisherman. After
wining and dining them, then telling them how the village belonged to a
bogus resistance group known as "The Sacred Sword of the Patriot League,"
they returned them back to North Vietnam. There, the disinformation spread
rapidly, causing our enemy to devote resources to crushing a movement that
didn't exist.
One man's lie, of course, is another's "tactical misdirection." But all
advertising paints selective pictures, which is why Sandler says, "A lot of
people in World War II got into PSYOPs from advertising. It's the same
thing, there's the hard sell, the soft sell, the guy next door, the
glamour-puss. That's one of the reasons we're so successful. We invented
bullshiton Madison Avenue."
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Matt Labash is senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
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