The U.S.Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements
in the early 1950s was advised that in order to escalate the
ideological offensive, it was necessary to assume a "more
aggressive stance." It described this stance as one which would
consist of "hard hitting advocacy of the American point of view,"
with the aim of "convincing" rather than "explaining." It also
called for "continuous engagement. ..grappling with communist
propaganda offenses on the spot." To illustrate, it used the
example of "the American labour movement against communist attempts
to capture the labor movements in many areas of the world." The
offensive should also consist of "outright psychological warfare in
which the object is to induce a target population to take a
specific, predictable course of action... exploit(ing) the
weaknesses in the antagonist's society, appeal(ing) to the
prejudices of its population, etc."
The U.S. Subcommittee considered the following "suggested
goals" for the propaganda program: "1) Implanting a belief that the
world's future belongs to free, democratic societies, which provide
the greatest all-around benefits to their members. 2) Convincing
the underdeveloped areas that the United States is genuinely
concerned with improving their ability to realize the benefits of
modern technology. 3) Eradicating the widespread misconceptions,
assiduously fostered by the Communists, that capitalism is a system
of exploitation, that communism is inevitable, that the United
States seeks to dominate the world, etc."
The set of suggested goals contained a footnote citing advice
from the U.S. Labor Department, according to which, "a clear
difference is being made between our type of capitalism, which has
resulted in U.S. labor becoming the main consumers for all items
of production, and monopoly capitalism, which may be called
exploitative, and has been fought in this country through
anti-trust legislation.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
