-Caveat Lector-
An excerpt from:
Propagnda, Inc., Selling America's Culture to the World
Nancy Snow©1998
Foreward©1998 by Herbert I. Schiller
Introduction©1998 by Michael Parenti
Seven Sister Press
ISBN 1-888363-74-6
Open Media Pamphlet Series
800-596-7437
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I can not recommend enough this essay by Nancy Snow. Another technocrat gone
awol. This is just a taste, Call or ask for it at your local bookstore. And
remember where the new head of NPR came from.
Om
K
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FOREWORD
by Herbert I. Schiller
One of the unique talents of American capitalism has been its mastery of
salesmanship. This should not be surprising given that marketing has been an
indispensable and pervasive feature of the economy since at least the Civil
War.
Still, selling a deeply flawed economic system to the people with the same
enthusiasm and success devoted to advertising a bar of soap is a challenging
assignment. just as dentifrices and deodorants are extolled as matchless and
wondrous, capitalism receives equally rapturous promotion, beginning in
children's primers and continuing through succeeding educational and cultural
channels across the social order.
One of the tricks of effective advertising is to identify the product with a
highly desirable quality that has widespread appeal. A certain toothpaste, for
instance, claims to offer a feeling of freshness. In selling the private
ownership system to the public, this first principle of hucksterism has been
applied with remarkable effectiveness.
In a nation whose origins began with an anti-colonial revolution, freedom and
liberty are powerful words. Fully aware of this, generations of systemic
hucksters have appropriated these words on behalf of profits and class-
dominated governance. This has been the national experience since the First
World War.
This cataclysmic event, along with its profound effects on the distribution of
world power, has transformed and exponentially increased American propaganda-
salesmanship for political goals-domestically and globally.
It ushered in an era of far-reaching American power-economically, politically,
and culturallywhich produced a giant global shift in influence from the old,
worn-out European empires, to the new financialcultural domain being created
by American capital.
To make the emerging American system of domination palatable at home and
acceptable abroad to nations which had struggled for centuries against
colonialism, a new dimension of propaganda was a necessity.
As Dr. Snow perceptively points out in her text, two overriding objectives
comprised the agenda for U. S. propaganda in the postwar period: the defense
of the existing capitalist world against threatened social change-socialism in
Western Europe and elsewhereand the capture of the ex-colonial world for
private enterprise and foreign capital.
Anti-communism was the instrument that served both objectives as well as the
means of gaining domestic support, or at least toleration, for American global
interventions and takeovers. Anti-communism turned attention away from
pressing problems at home and abroad by focusing hysterically on fabricated
external threats. At the same time, it enabled a continually expanding U.S.
world presence to be explained as offering protection against communism.
For nearly half a century, the United States Information Agency (USIA) waged
ideological war against communism in its worldwide broadcasts. Using the
rhetoric of freedom and liberty-the CIA-operated stations in Europe were named
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty-American propaganda dwelled on the ominous
and imminent threat of communism, while U.S. corporations moved into one
global space after another.
The influence of the USIA in this period cannot be over-exaggerated.
Certainly, the commercial flood of U.S. cultural products that engulfed the
world in the last fifty years-movies, TV programs, recordings, publications,
student exchanges, theme parks, data bases et al—was, by far, the most
important means in transmitting ideology, anti-communism and American socio-
economic institutions. Yet the USIA did its bit to target those government
bureaucrats, intellectuals, local managers, etc., who may have disdained U. S.
popular culture.
Once the Soviet system collapsed, however, the propaganda war took a new turn.
Again, Dr. Snow is right on target as she charts the shift in the USIAs
efforts, away from anti-communism to full devotion to U. S. corporate
initiatives, to extend the latter's influence in what Wall Street designated
as "emerging market" states, mostly former colonial territories.
Snow makes amply clear that, in this latest propaganda campaign, the use of
student and academic exchange programs, and the Agency's mandate to work for
mutual understanding between nations, have been perverted into crass missions
to assist American companies in finding profitable business overseas.
Yet propaganda has its limits. Reality, at some point, always intrudes. As
this is written, people in many Southeast Asian countries are discovering that
the bitter truths about the much touted capitalism and its farflung network of
control, cannot indefinitely be made acceptable by propaganda. Despite the
powerful transmitters at the disposal of capital, the harsh features of a
market organized society and its inherent connection to inequality sooner or
later will be recognized and resisted.
Dr. Snow, in this essay, makes a contribution to this end.
Herbert I. Schiller is the author of Mass Communications and American Empire;
Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression; and most recently,
Information Inequality.
INTRODUCTION
by Michael Parenti
For generations, a fundamental function of U.S. foreign policy has been to
make certain that the natural resources, markets, labor, and capital of other
nations were accessible to U.S. corporate investors on the most favorable
terms possible. In 1907, Woodrow Wilson offered this candid observation:
"Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on
having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the
doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down.
Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state,
even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process."
In his 1953 State of the Union message President Dwight Eisenhower observed,
"A serious and explicit purpose of our foreign policy [is] the encouragement
of a hospitable climate for investment in foreign nations." What no U.S.
president has ever explained is: What gives the United States the right to
dictate the destinies of other nations, mold their development, and intervene
forcibly against them when they dare to mark an independent course?
With unfailing consistency, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich
and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather
than strengthening democracies, U. S. leaders have overthrown numerous
democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of
countries-from Chile to Guatemala to Indonesia to Mozambiquewhenever these
nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the
interests of multinational corporate investors.
While claiming that such interventions are needed to safeguard democracy in
the world, U.S. leaders have given aid and comfort to dozens of tyrannical
regimes that have overthrown reformist democratic governments (as in Chile and
Guatemala, for instance) and shown themselves to be faithful acolytes of the
transnational corporate investors. In 1993, before the United Nations,
President Bill Clinton proclaimed, "Our overriding purpose is to expand and
strengthen the world's community of market-based democracies." In truth, as
Nancy Snow shows in this cogent and revealing pamphlet, the emphasis has been
more on the "market-based" and less on the "democracy."
To the American public and to the world, however, as Snow notes, U.S. policy
has been represented in the most glowing-and most deceptive-terms. Peace,
prosperity, and democracy have become coded propaganda terms. "Peace" means
U.S. global military domination, a kind of Pax Americana. "Prosperity" means
subsidizing the expansion of U.S. corporate interests abroad, at the expense
of the U.S. taxpayer and the millions of people in other nations who might be
better served by loyal and independent development. And "democracy," Nancy
Snow notes, means a system in which political decisions are made by the
transnational and publicly unaccountable corporate interests and their
government allies, "not based on a populist or participatory ideal of politics
but one in which the public's role is minimized."
Global capitalist hegemony is attained by two means. First, there is the
global military apparatus. The U.S. defense budget is at least five times
larger than any other country's defense expenditures. U.S. naval, air, and
ground forces maintain a police presence around the globe, using hundreds of
military bases throughout various regions. U.S. advisors train, equip, and
finance military and paramilitary forces in countries on every continent. All
this to make the world safe for the transnationals.
The other instrument of U.S. intervention might be called "cultural
imperialism," the systematic penetration and dominance of other nations'
communication and informational systems, educational institutions, arts,
religious organizations, labor unions, elections, consumer habits, and
lifestyles. Drawing upon both her personal experience and her scholarly
investigation, Nancy Snow offers us a critical picture of one of the key
instruments of cultural imperialism, the United States Information Agency
(USIA). A benign-sounding unit of government supposedly dedicated to
informational and cultural goals, USIA is actually in the business of waging
disinformation wars on behalf of the Fortune 500.
Operating as a propaganda unit of a corporate-dominated U. S. foreign policy,
USIA ran interference for NAFTA, in Snow's words, "doing nothing to advance
the more noble goals of mutual understanding and education," while leaving a
trail of broken promises about jobs and prosperity. USIAs efforts on behalf of
NAFTA and other such undertakings have brought fantastic jumps in profits for
big business, at great cost to the environment, democratic sovereignty, and
worker and consumer well-being.
Nancy Snow also deals with the larger issues that go beyond the USIA,
especially the way the U. S. political system is dominated and distorted by
moneyed interests, transforming democracy into plutocracy, and making a more
democratic U. S. foreign policy improbable.
Still, as Snow reminds us, victories can be won when broad-based democratic
forces unite and fight back vigorously. A recent example would be the defeat
of fasttrack legislation in Congress in 1997 in the face of a massive blitz
launched by powerful business associations, the White House, and the major
media. Snow concludes with a useful and instructive seven-point agenda for a
citizen-based diplomacy, pointing out how readers can and should get involved.
In the pages ahead, Nancy Snow shows herself to be a discerning, fair-minded
investigator, a skilled writer and researcher, and a socially conscious
citizen. No wonder she found herself unable to function within the U.S.
propaganda machine. She's too good for Corporate America.
Michael Parenti is the author of Against Empire; Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism; and the recently published
America Besieged.
Propagnda, Inc., Selling America's Culture to the World
To criticize one's country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment.
— J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power
The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great
political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power,
and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate
power against democracy.
— Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Just two blocks from the Mall and the most visited museum in the world, the
National Air and Space Museum, are the headquarters of the United States
Information Agency (USIA). The USIA receives annual support of about one
billion dollars from the American taxpayers but this U.S. government agency is
no tourist attraction. In fact, it is unlikely that most Americans would have
heard of it. It's one of the best-kept secrets in Washington. This is ironic
because the U.S. Information Agency, as the name implies, is the information
and communication branch of our foreign policy establishment, targeting
overseas audiences[1] (U.S. law does not allow Americans to receive USIA
information). It's easier abroad to learn about the USIA whose motto is
"telling America's story to the world." But don't pack your bags just yet.
Take an armchair tour with me.
THE USIA: OUR GOVERNMENT'S
"OFFICIAL" PROPAGANDA AGENCY
The USIA is in the export business. It manufactures a favorable point of view
about America to foreign audiences, presumably to advance the national
interests of the U. S. government. It does this through various means:
diplomatic posts known overseas as the U. S. Information Service (USIS),
exchange activities such as the Fulbright and International Visitor programs,
information programs, and international broadcasting which includes the Voice
of America.[2]
The USIA likes to call its particular branch of foreign affairs "public
diplomacy," a euphemism for propaganda.[3] The encyclopedia definition for
propaganda is "instruments of psychological warfare aimed at influencing the
actions of human beings in ways that are compatible with the national-interest
objectives of the purveying state"[4] USIA prefers the term public diplomacy
to propaganda because it doesn't want the American public to think that its
own government engages in psychological warfare and because "propaganda" in
the United States is a pejorative term for negative or offensive manipulation,
particularly in the political arena.
Propaganda is also thought to characterize primarily the heinous activities of
20th-century totalitarian regimes, like National Socialism or Stalinist
communism that used state- sanctioned methods to deliberately distort the
truth. Many Americans today view their own government and other professed
democracies like the United States generally as tellers of the truth except,
of course, in wartime or when trying to win over converts during the cold
war.[5] It would surprise many Americans to learn
that our own government has a decades-long history of propagandizing its own
population and other countries.
THE USIA'S PROTOTYPE: THE CREEL COMMISSION
During the first three years of World War I, the United States remained
neutral. On August 19, 1914, President Wilson issued a declaration of
neutrality to Congress: "Every man who loves America will act and speak in the
true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness
and friendliness to all concerned." He went on to describe the United States
as "the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play
a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and
accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend."[6] Many Americans were
decisively pacifistic and even reelected President Wilson to a second term in
office on a "Keep America out of the War" ticket. To try to sway American
public opinion and to gain sympathy for the Allied cause, the British
government set up a secret war propaganda bureau in 1914. The most successful
British propaganda technique was to target influential persons and opinion
leaders in U. S. government, business, education, and media. As one document
put it: "It is better to influence those who can influence others than attempt
a direct appeal to the mass of the population."[7]
On April 2, 1917, just six months after Wilson's reelection, he delivered his
message of war to Congress: "Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable
where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and
the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic
governments backed by organized force which is controlled by their will, not
the will of their people."[8] He made it clear in his message of war that "we
have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one
of sympathy and friendship."
The U. S. declared war on Germany four days later. One week later the U. S.
government set up its own propaganda organization, the Committee on Public
Information (CPI), which would become so successful an operation that it would
lead to the eventual establishment of the U. S. Information Agency.
A well-known American journalist, George Creel, who described the CPI as "a
plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's
greatest adventure in advertising," headed the CPI.[9] The Creel Committee had
two sections: one domestic, to propagandize the American public against the
Germans, and one foreign, which was divided into a foreign press bureau, a
wireless and cable service, and the foreign film service. The foreign section
soon supervised offices in more than thirty countries.
George Creel and his committee members had to convince the American people
that a war some 4,000 miles away was worth fighting. The first transatlantic
flight was still two years away and the American soil was not directly
threatened. Creel explained the entire propaganda operation in his book, How
We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee
on Public Information that Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner
of the Globe.[10] Creel estimated that 72 million copies of thirty different
booklets about American ideals and the purposes of war were sent across the
United States while millions were sent abroad. He organized a group of 75,000
influential speakers, nicknamed the "Four Minute Men" for the average length
of their patriotic speeches.[11] These men gave more than one million speeches
to 400 million people at home and abroad. Creel's strategy worked to sell war
bonds, aid in the recruitment of soldiers, and stir up popular sentiment for
war.
Even the new Hollywood film industry helped to exploit a weekly film audience
of 80 million. One film, The Little American, by the legendary director Cecil
B. De Mille, starred child actress Mary Pickford as a young American girl who
travels to France to visit her aunt. Along the way, a German submarine
torpedoes her ship.
The girl survives and witnesses more German atrocities while in France. She
supplies information to the French about German positions, is later arrested
by the Germans but is rescued before she is due to be executed by firing
squad. Other American films, like The Hun Within, The Kaiser, The Beast of
Burden, and The Claws of the Hun, suggested that the German threat was right
on American soil. If the American filmgoers were not sufficiently saturated
with nationalistic messages, one of the Four-Minute Men would appear between
reel changes to rally more anti-German support.
Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations, was the Creel
Committee's chief for Latin America. He persuaded some of the largest U. S.
corporations of the day (Ford, Studebaker, Remington Typewriter, National City
Bank, and international Harvester) to open up their Latin-American retail
outlets as Creel Committee outposts. "Pamphlets and other publications were
distributed to customers, and posters and photographic displays filled
windows. Advertising was sometimes given or denied to Latin American papers in
accordance with the editorial attitude toward the war."[12]
The Creel Committee successfully merged business with government interests.
The Creel approach worked so well that Americans learned to hate German
civilians as much if not more than the targeted enemy, the German government.
Fitzhugh Green observes in his 1988 account, American Propaganda Abroad: "If
anyone, even today, questions the domestic impact of CPI, he has only to ask
educated Americans why we fought World War I. Inevitably he will hear that it
was the 'war to end all wars,' 'save the world for democracy,' and to put down
the Kaiser who started it all anyway.... Creel virtually brainwashed the
American citizenry."[13]
While the British had first demonstrated to the world the power of wartime
propaganda, they abandoned it in peacetime. The United States, led by Bernays,
took up the mantle of propaganda campaigns in manufacturing public support for
American-style democracy. In Crystallizing Public Opinion, Engineering
Consent, and Propaganda, Bernays argued that American public opinion must be
engineered from above by society's few masters, the intelligent minorities, to
control the rabble. Bernays described these engineers of consent as "the
invisible government ... concentrated in the hands of a few because of the
expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and
habits of the masses."[14]
One of Bernays's first successes was convincing American women that smoking
was glamorous and liberating (women's suffrage had been passed in 1920),
despite common fears that smoking was associated with prostitution. He did
this by hiring models to march in New York's Easter parade in 1929, each
holding a lit cigarette and wearing a banner proclaiming it a "torch of
liberty." Women made Bernays's client brand, Lucky Strike, an overnight
success.[15]
In the 1930s, Bernays worked with corporate America to convince the American
people that social movements and worker rights were a threat to American
business and, in turn, the American way of life.[16] The business world was
reacting to the growing political power of the masses and turned to Bernays to
"indoctrinate citizens with the capitalist story" until they were able to play
back the story with remarkable fidelity.[17] It was a very successful public
relations campaign whose anti-labor and pro-corporate sentiments continue to
the present. As of 1995, the United States had more public relations
professionals (150,000) than reporters (130,000). Academics like Mark Dowie
estimated that about 40 percent of what we consider "news" was generated
directly by public relations offices.[18]
THE USIA'S COLD WAR ORIGINS
In June 1942, President Roosevelt coordinated all public information into the
Office of War Information (OWI) which set up twenty-six posts overseas known
as the U. S. Information Service (USIS). By 1948, the U. S. had passed the
Smith-Mundt Act to establish the first peacetime propaganda agency whose
purpose was "to promote a better understanding of the United States in other
countries, and to increase mutual understanding."[19] With it, Truman
initiated his "Campaign of Truth" to direct U. S. propaganda activities
against the spread of international communism. By June 1950, Truman's cold war
propaganda machine was put to the test as U. S. forces entered South Korea
under the United Nations banner to fight North Korea. The U. S. military was
not used to working closely with propagandists who employed psychological
warfare tactics to influence rather than kill the enemy.
Fitzhugh Green explains a noteworthy exception to this lack of military faith
in "psywar" action in his book, American Propaganda Abroad. An American
officer who had fought in Korea "recalled how the U. S. artillery fired some
leaflet-loaded shells set for high burst over a steepsloped valley in North
Korea. The surrender tracts floated gently down onto the forested ravine.
Moments after they landed, one or two Chinese infantrymen appeared from the
trees, picked up the papers, and studied them. Sure enough, they started in
the direction of the UN command headquarters. The leaflets promised a safe
conduct to the rear and good treatment as prisoners of war until peace could
be restored. Minutes later, he observed from his artillery post that hundreds
of enemy soldiers were striding south. Finally, there appeared to be two or
three thousand of them. 'What happened then?' 1 asked. 'Oh,' he laughed
uneasily, 'we reloaded our guns with antipersonnel ammunition and wiped out
the whole lot.' 'So you would agree that psywar is effective?' I pursued. 'Why
yes, you might say that it can be devastating ....'"[20]
Aside from that bloody war account, the USIA's origins were more cold war in
emphasis. When the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, the U. S.
Advisory Commission on Information responded with a plea for more propaganda,
not less. Like President Kennedy's missile-gap theory that justified increased
military spending and began the U. S. arms race with the Soviets in the 1960s,
a culture gap in the late 1950s would justify increased expenditures in
propaganda. "The United States may be a year behind in mass technological
education. But it is thirty years behind in competition with communist
propaganda ... each year sees the communists increase their hours of
broadcasting, their production and distribution of books, their motion
pictures and cultural exchanges and every other type of propaganda and
information activity.... We should start planning to close the gap in this
field before it widens further."[21]
In many parts of the world today, and in most dictionaries, propaganda has no
inherent negative connotation. It is widely accepted that advertising and
public relations employ propagandistic techniques in order to sell merchandise
or image. Three important characteristics of propaganda are that (1) it is
intentional communication, designed to change the attitudes of the targeted
audience; (2) it is advantageous to the persuader in order to further the
persuader's cause vis-a-vis an audience (which explains why advertising,
public relations, and political campaigns are forms of propaganda); and (3) it
is usually one-way information (i.e., a mass media campaign) as opposed to
education which is two-way and interactive.[22]
This is why I favor the use of the word "propaganda" over "public diplomacy"
to describe the modern operations of the U. S. Information Agency. I consider
the USIA a public relations instrument of corporate propaganda which "sells"
America's story abroad by integrating business interests with cultural
objectives. In the same way that the Creel Commission persuaded the American
population during World War I to accept without questioning a total war
against Germany and the German people, the USIA utilizes psychological warfare
to promote the superiority of American free enterprise, the expansion of
American business interests overseas, and the promotion of the U. S. economy
as a model for how other market economies can succeed in the global economy.
American commercial interests have come to dominate U. S. foreign policy in
general and the USIA in particular although anticommunism remains a small
element, as in statesponsored media operations directed at Cuba and China.
I offer this critique of the corporate domination of the USIA as one who
experienced these events firsthand. From 1992-1994, 1 participated in a
federal government program for graduate students called the Presidential
Management Intern (PMI) program. The PMI program was initiated by former
President Jimmy Carter to attract our nation's best and brightest graduate
students to public service through enticing offers of fast-track government
management opportunities. My first and only PMI interview was at the United
States Information Agency. The USIA was interested in hiring me for several
reasons: I was about to receive my Ph.D. in international relations from The
American University's School of International Service; I had just defended my
doctoral dissertation on "Fulbright Scholars as Cultural Mediators" in which I
documented the range of literature on cultural exchange and study abroad; and
I was a Fulbright scholar to Germany where I pursued graduate study in
political science. Finally, I had accrued several years work experience in the
private sector as a cultural exchange specialist.[23]
I worked in the USIA's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, (the "E
Bureau" in government — speak), the purpose of which is to conduct cultural
programs which increase mutual understanding between the people of the United
States and people of other countries. All E Bureau programs were administered
under Public Law 87-256, the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of
1961, best known as the Fulbright-Hays Act. The Fulbright-Hays Act still
provides the legislative authority for the Fulbright program and other
educational exchange programs like the International Visitor program. The main
objective of the Act is to "enable the government of the United States to
increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the
people of other countries ... and thus to assist in the development of
friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations, between the United States and
other countries of the world."[24]
While working in the E Bureau, I acted as the USIA contact for the Fulbright
program in Germany, Spain, and the former Yugoslavia. Having been a Fulbright
recipient, I very much believed in the ideals of educational exchange as
illustrated by Senator Fulbright's remarks in The Price of Empire: "The one
thing that gives me some hope is the ethos that underlies the educational
exchange program. That ethos, in sum, is the belief that international
relations can be improved, and the danger of war significantly reduced, by
producing generations of leaders, who through the experience of educational
exchange, will have acquired some feeling and understanding of other peoples'
cultures, why they operate as they do, why they think as they do, why they
react as they do, and of the differences among these cultures. It is possible,
not very probable, but possible that people can find in themselves, through
intercultural education, the ways and means of living together in peace."[25]
Fulbright's idealistic sentiment was what made him opposed to housing his
namesake educational exchange program in the U. S. Information Agency. He
wasn't altogether thrilled about the existence of the USIA in general and even
supported a plan by Senator Claiborne Pell in 1987 to dismantle the agency.
Had the plan been accepted, the Smithsonian Institution would have become home
to American cultural affairs and the Fulbright program (because its emphasis
was on education and not propaganda). Public affairs and policy making would
return to the State Department and the Voice of America would operate like a
BBC-style independent organization. The plan never took shape and the USIA
undertook a new post-cold war propaganda emphasis on democracy and free
markets under the Clinton administration. The Fulbright program in particular
and educational exchange in general were to become useful promotional tools
for the supremacy of the American economic model and global integration.
By the fall of 1993, as the deal-making over NAFTA marked the halls of
Congress, the USIA was quietly building its own NAFTA—inspired trilateral
educational system between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. At a trinational
conference on higher education in Vancouver, USIA director Joseph Duffey
announced: "Economic integration without a deepening of our educational and
cultural dimension poses an unacceptable risk: a collision of values that
could well lead to more discord than we would have had without NAFTA."[26]
At the conference, the historically leftist, anti-U.S. National Autonomous
University (UNAM) in Mexico City announced for the first time that it was
providing 5 million pesos (about $1.6 million) in scholarships for Mexican
students and professors to study in the U. S. and Canada. Texas A&M
University, which already had agreements with 20 Mexican institutions,
announced that it had become the first U. S. university to establish a
permanent presence in Mexico. The new university would share floor space in
downtown Mexico City with the Texas Chamber of Commerce. Most of the
trilateral participants were emphasizing international business in their
curriculum. San Diego State and Southwest Community College, with U. S.
federal funding, announced the creation of the first U.S.-Mexico undergraduate
degree in international business. Participating students would spend two years
on an American campus and two years at a Tijuana college. Said Paul Ganster of
San Diego State: "This is a logical culmination of those concerned about
educating the NAFTA generation. They can be competitive on both sides of the
border."[27]
The Fulbright program's educational mission to enhance mutual understanding is
increasingly measured against the USIA's propaganda purpose to "explain and
support American foreign policy and promote U. S. understanding between the
United States and other nations by conducting educational and cultural
activities."[28] Jeffrey Gayner, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage
Foundation, argued in a report prepared for the Fulbright program's 50th
anniversary that the Fulbright program's emphasis on mutual understanding
"neglected the complementary mission of supporting the USIA's mandate to
promote American foreign policy."[29] This negligence was tacitly acknowledged
by John P. Loiello, Associate Director for Educational and Cultural Affairs at
the USIA, in comments to the annual meeting of the Fulbright Association in
October 1994. He noted that legislators in Congress "will ask more difficult
questions, like how does mutual understanding relate to initiatives on
sustainable development, integration in the world economy and U. S.
competitiveness."[30] (While working as a presidential management intern in
the E Bureau, 1 considered short-term U. S. foreign economic policy objectives
a political intrusion into the independence of this prestigious educational
program. The trend continues, however.)
The post-NAFTA conversion of educational exchange was evident most recently
during President Clinton's May 1997 state visit to Mexico. The USIA announced
a doubling of the U.S-Mexico Fulbright program, adding about 200 new Mexican
and U.S. student scholarships a year. The reason for the Fulbright expansion
in Mexico was purely economic, as indicated by a USIS Washington File report:
"The expansion of this program will strengthen educational opportunities in
both countries and build on the success of NAFTA whereby exports to Mexico are
up 37 percent, an all-time high, creating jobs for Americans. Moreover, even
during Mexico's financial crisis, the Mexican government maintained its
Fulbright contribution, an impressive statement of the value it places on the
program."[31] This announcement comes at a time when the overall Fulbright
program struggles to maintain its current level of funding. It appears that
countries with no geo-economic value are destined for further cuts or complete
cut-offs under this free — trade- inspired Fulbright program.
Mutual understanding is a two-way, educationally oriented process that is
decidedly nonpropagandistic. It should stand on its own merits, free of
commercial tieins or short-term foreign policy goals. Unfortunately the USIA
has downplayed its worthy ideals about mutual understanding and functions more
like a full-time cheerleader for U.S.-led economic and cultural dominance of
the global economy. This renewed hucksterism may be characteristic of the
passing of the cold war but it raises the ire of other countries, even
America's closest allies, which are increasingly critical of U. S. dominance
in the political, economic, and cultural sector. As illustrated by Washington
Post writer William Drozdiak, an October 1997 cover story in the German
magazine Der Spiegel charged that "the Americans are acting, in the absence of
limits put to them by anybody or anything, as if they own a blank check in
their 'McWorld.' Strengthened by the end of communism and an economic boom,
Washington seems to have abandoned its self-doubts from the Vietnam trauma.
America is now the Schwarzenegger of international politics: showing off
muscles, obtrusive, intimidating. Never before in modern history has a country
dominated the earth so totally as the United States does today. Globalization
wears a 'Made in the USA' label."[32]
When 150 countries gathered in Bonn, Germany in October 1997 to craft a global
warming treaty, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. received almost
universal condemnation for not accepting greater responsibility for its
production of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. "How can the Americans,
with around 5 percent of the world's population, go on accounting for a
quarter of its greenhouse gases? This flagrant imbalance cannot be allowed to
continue," said Klaus Kinkel, Germany's foreign minister.[33]
Other allies are bothered that the U. S. wants to dictate its foreign policy
to other countries. After the Denver summit of the world's leading industrial
democracies in June 1997, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin echoed the
sentiment of other countries when he said, "We see a certain tendency toward
hegemony, which is not necessarily identical with exercising the global
responsibilities of a great power, even if it is a friend."[34] When South
African President Nelson Mandela was criticized by the United States for
visiting Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, he rebuffed such criticism: "How can
they (the U.S.) have the arrogance to dictate to us where we should go or
which countries should be our friends? We cannot accept that a state assumes
the role of the world's policeman.'[35] It appears that even friendly allies
are flexing their muscles now that cold war loyalties have disappeared. This
underscores the need for the USIA to reassess its U.S.—first projection of
global supremacy.
For some reason, even though the United States celebrates free expression and
dissent in the abstract, it is often met with great scorn when it is
exercised. As Senator William J. Fulbright writes in his 1966 book, The
Arrogance of Power, "Intolerance of dissent is a wellnoted feature of the
American national character. "[36] His words are echoed by the Frenchman
Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote in Democracy in America: "I know of no country
in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of
discussion as in America."[37]
Fulbright believed that lack of independent thinking is especially acute in
the federal bureaucracy that has a "congenital inhospitality" to unorthodox
ideas. "In most, if not all government agencies, originality, especially at
the lower levels, is regarded as a form of insolence or worse."[38]
The PMI program was, ironically enough, designed to bring in fresh blood and
new ideas. My academic background in international relations and international
communication served me well throughout my two years at the USIA (including a
four-month work rotation at the State Department). I received favorable
evaluations of my work, including a commendation by the J. William Fulbright
Foreign Scholarship Board, and I was selected to represent the USIA in two
cultural exchanges to japan. The agency often asked me to prepare speeches
illustrating USIAs value in a post-cold war era, including the time I prepared
quotes about the value of educational and cultural exchange for President
Clinton's First Inaugural Address (which he didn't use!).
Just weeks before my PMI program ended in 1994, I was asked to prepare a
speech for John P. Loiello, the director of the Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs, for a conference on culture and diplomacy. The speech
illustrated the USIA's commitment to merging commerce and culture in national
security and foreign policy objectives, particularly in the new Bureau of
information, the "I Bureau."
The I Bureau's launching in the fall of 1994 underscored the preeminence of
the advocacy and promotion function of the USIA over its educational and
cultural mission. The I Bureau's mission is to distribute information to USIS
field offices in support of the vital interests of the United States. These
vital interests are defined as explaining and advocating American foreign
policy through the dissemination of "authoritative texts and expert
interpretation"; facilitating the free flow of information, enhancing access
to information technology, and promoting respect for intellectual property
rights; representing "enduring American values, particularly the U. S.
commitment to freedom and equality"; and promoting and supporting
democratization, human rights, the rule of law, market economies, and the
peaceful resolution of disputes.[39]
I completed my PMI program and received an amicable divorce from a
bureaucratic career path. My preferences for mutual understanding and cultural
democracy were clearly at odds with the economic priorities and national
security objectives of the USIA. My purpose now as an educator and activist is
to publicly air what 1 experienced while working inside the USIA's
bureaucracy, to develop a credible critique of a corporatebased diplomacy, and
to offer an alternative civil-based diplomacy. When my students finish reading
this pamphlet, they'll recognize the spirit of Fulbright in this reminder: the
pursuit of truth, as a form of political action, is inherently disruptive,
anti-authoritarian, and dangerous to those content with the way things are. So
if you tell the truth, be prepared to remain open to the criticism that always
follows.
THE ART OF PROPAGANDA
Propaganda, by definition, must have a target audience. The USIA's audience is
determined by the political ideology of the propagandist. In other words, the
USIA targets primarily elite clients from the upper class business and
professional echelon who will look to the United States as the world's leader.
Clients often participate in sponsored visits as guests of the United States
government, like in the International Visitor Program. These clients are the
roughly 10 to 20 percent of the target population with promise or influence
potential, relatively high education, and who play some role in political and
economic decision making. They are mostly journalists/editors, academicians
and entrepreneurs who would benefit from a three-week information tour of the
United States.
As a cultural affairs consultant, I have worked with these International
Visitors on numerous occasions. Not all of them are predisposed to support the
United States and some are actually chosen expressly for their strong anti-
American feelings.[40] Nevertheless, millions of U. S. taxpayer dollars have
been spent to "host" these visitors, all with the goal of persuading them to
support the national interest and foreign policy of the U. S. government.
The USIA targets the educated elite, despite some negative sentiments, because
propaganda is thought to be most effective on the small minority of powerful
influence peddlers. As Noam Chomsky explains, "One reason that propaganda
often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated
people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have
jobs in management, media, and academia, and therefore work in some capacity
as agents of the propaganda system-and they believe what the system expects
them to believe. By and large, they're part of the privileged elite, and share
the interests and perceptions of those in power."[41]
>From USIA's perspective, the educated elite are in the best position to design
and influence pro-America policy in their respective countries. What about the
mass majority, those 80 to 90 percent whom journalist Walter Lippmann calls
the "bewildered herd"? They are expected to simply go along with the program
and not trouble themselves with political or economic decision making. in his
book, The Phantom Public, Lippmann said that "the public must be put in its
place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even
more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and roar of a
bewildered herd. Only the insider can make decisions, not because he is
inherently a better man but because he is so placed that he can understand and
can act. The outsider is necessarily ignorant, usually irrelevant, and often
meddlesome."[42]
The USIA uses various media, including overseas radio broadcasts like the
Voice of America and its television counterpart Worldnet, to further influence
society's insiders. For the most part, the so-called "bewildered herd" isn't
expected to pay much attention to these USIA broadcasts and business-as-usual.
The herd is seen as the target audience of the commercial mass media through
tabloid news, professional sports, and popular television.
pps.5-31
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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