(no subject)
I like the way this was worded. Its long, but worth reading if you have the time.
Lessons in How to Lie About Iraq
The problem is not propaganda but the relentless
control of the kind of things we think about
by Brian Eno
When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made friends
with a musician whose father had been Brezhnev's
personal doctor. One day we were talking about life during
'the period of stagnation' - the Brezhnev era. 'It must
have been strange being so completely immersed in
propaganda,' I said.
'Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was
propaganda,' replied Sacha.
That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so
obvious that most Russians were able to ignore it. They
took it for granted that the government operated in its
own interests and any message coming from it was
probably slanted - and they discounted it.
In the West the calculated manipulation of public
opinion to serve political and ideological interests is
much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its
greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it
- or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the
democratic process taking place - heated debates in
which we feel we could have a voice - and think that,
because we have 'free' media, it would be hard for the
Government to get away with anything very devious
without someone calling them on it.
It takes something as dramatic as the invasion of Iraq
to make us look a bit more closely and ask: 'How did
we get here?' How exactly did it come about that, in a
world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars,
several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two
billion people in poverty, practically the only thing
we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam
Hussein? Was it really that big a problem? Or were we
somehow manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was
important and had to be fixed right now - even though a
few months before few had mentioned it, and nothing had
changed in the interim.
In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now
seems clear that the shock of the attacks was
exploited in America. According to Sheldon Rampton and John
Stauber in their new book Weapons of Mass Deception , it
was used to engineer a state of emergency that would
justify an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose
how news was fabricated and made to seem real. But
they also demonstrate how a coalition of the willing -
far-Right officials, neo-con think-tanks, insanely
pugilistic media commentators and of course well-paid PR
companies - worked together to pull off a sensational
piece of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of
modern propaganda.
What occurs to me in reading their book is that the
new American approach to social control is so much more
sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a
new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's
'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we
think, but the control of what we think about. When our
governments want to sell us a course of action, they
do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda,
the only thing everyone's talking about. And they
pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected
images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages,
weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'.
(What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair
Campbell be but a prime example of this?)
With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy
if you then 'use the democratic process' to agree or
disagree - for, after all, their intention is to
mobilize enough headlines and conversation to make the whole
thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the
debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality
demands action.
An example of this process is one highlighted by
Rampton and Stauber which, more than any other,
consolidated public and congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf
war. We recall the horrifying stories, incessantly
repeated, of babies in Kuwaiti hospitals ripped out of
their incubators and left to die while the Iraqis
shipped the incubators back to Baghdad - 312 babies, we were
told.
The story was brought to public attention by Nayirah,
a 15-year-old 'nurse' who, it turned out later, was
the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and a
member of the Kuwaiti royal family. Nayirah had been
tutored and rehearsed by the Hill & Knowlton PR agency
(which in turn received $14 million from the American
government for their work in promoting the war). Her
story was entirely discredited within weeks but by then
its purpose had been served: it had created an
outraged and emotional mindset within America which
overwhelmed rational discussion.
As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war
entailed many similar deceits: false linkages made between
Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories of ready-to-launch
weapons that didn't exist, of nuclear programs never
embarked upon. As Rampton and Stauber show, many of these
allegations were discredited as they were being made,
not least by this newspaper, but nevertheless were
retold.
Throughout all this, the hired-gun PR companies were
busy, preconditioning the emotional landscape. Their
marketing talents were particularly useful in the
large-scale manipulation of language that the campaign
entailed. The Bushites realized, as all ideologues do, that
words create realities, and that the right words can
over whelm any chance of balanced discussion. Guided by
the overtly imperial vision of the Project for a New
American Century (whose members now form the core of
the American administration), the PR companies helped
finesse the language to create an atmosphere of
simmering panic where American imperialism would come to seem
not only acceptable but right, obvious, inevitable and
even somehow kind.
Aside from the incessant 'weapons of mass
destruction', there were 'regime change' (military invasion),
'pre-emptive defense' (attacking a country that is not
attacking you), 'critical regions' (countries we want to
control), the 'axis of evil' (countries we want to
attack), 'shock and awe' (massive obliteration) and 'the
war on terror' (a hold-all excuse for projecting
American military force anywhere).
Meanwhile, US federal employees and military personnel
were told to refer to the invasion as 'a war of
liberation' and to the Iraqi paramilitaries as 'death
squads', while the reliably sycophantic American TV networks
spoke of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' - just as the
Pentagon asked them to - thus consolidating the supposition
that Iraqi freedom was the point of the war. Anybody
questioning the invasion was 'soft on terror' (liberal)
or, in the case of the UN, 'in danger of losing its
relevance'.
When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach
me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me
to lie, but because he thought I should know how it's
done so I would recognize when I was being lied to. I
hope writers such as Rampton and Stauber and others
may have the same effect and help to emasculate the
culture of spin and dissembling that is overtaking our
political establishments.
A longer version of this article will appear in the
new literary magazine, Zembla. Weapons of Mass Deception
by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber is published by
Robinson at £6.99
(c) Brian Eno 2003
http://www.commondreams.com
Lessons in How to Lie About Iraq
The problem is not propaganda but the relentless
control of the kind of things we think about
by Brian Eno
When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made friends
with a musician whose father had been Brezhnev's
personal doctor. One day we were talking about life during
'the period of stagnation' - the Brezhnev era. 'It must
have been strange being so completely immersed in
propaganda,' I said.
'Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was
propaganda,' replied Sacha.
That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so
obvious that most Russians were able to ignore it. They
took it for granted that the government operated in its
own interests and any message coming from it was
probably slanted - and they discounted it.
In the West the calculated manipulation of public
opinion to serve political and ideological interests is
much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its
greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it
- or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the
democratic process taking place - heated debates in
which we feel we could have a voice - and think that,
because we have 'free' media, it would be hard for the
Government to get away with anything very devious
without someone calling them on it.
It takes something as dramatic as the invasion of Iraq
to make us look a bit more closely and ask: 'How did
we get here?' How exactly did it come about that, in a
world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars,
several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two
billion people in poverty, practically the only thing
we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam
Hussein? Was it really that big a problem? Or were we
somehow manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was
important and had to be fixed right now - even though a
few months before few had mentioned it, and nothing had
changed in the interim.
In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now
seems clear that the shock of the attacks was
exploited in America. According to Sheldon Rampton and John
Stauber in their new book Weapons of Mass Deception , it
was used to engineer a state of emergency that would
justify an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose
how news was fabricated and made to seem real. But
they also demonstrate how a coalition of the willing -
far-Right officials, neo-con think-tanks, insanely
pugilistic media commentators and of course well-paid PR
companies - worked together to pull off a sensational
piece of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of
modern propaganda.
What occurs to me in reading their book is that the
new American approach to social control is so much more
sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a
new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's
'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we
think, but the control of what we think about. When our
governments want to sell us a course of action, they
do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda,
the only thing everyone's talking about. And they
pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected
images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages,
weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'.
(What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair
Campbell be but a prime example of this?)
With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy
if you then 'use the democratic process' to agree or
disagree - for, after all, their intention is to
mobilize enough headlines and conversation to make the whole
thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the
debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality
demands action.
An example of this process is one highlighted by
Rampton and Stauber which, more than any other,
consolidated public and congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf
war. We recall the horrifying stories, incessantly
repeated, of babies in Kuwaiti hospitals ripped out of
their incubators and left to die while the Iraqis
shipped the incubators back to Baghdad - 312 babies, we were
told.
The story was brought to public attention by Nayirah,
a 15-year-old 'nurse' who, it turned out later, was
the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and a
member of the Kuwaiti royal family. Nayirah had been
tutored and rehearsed by the Hill & Knowlton PR agency
(which in turn received $14 million from the American
government for their work in promoting the war). Her
story was entirely discredited within weeks but by then
its purpose had been served: it had created an
outraged and emotional mindset within America which
overwhelmed rational discussion.
As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war
entailed many similar deceits: false linkages made between
Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories of ready-to-launch
weapons that didn't exist, of nuclear programs never
embarked upon. As Rampton and Stauber show, many of these
allegations were discredited as they were being made,
not least by this newspaper, but nevertheless were
retold.
Throughout all this, the hired-gun PR companies were
busy, preconditioning the emotional landscape. Their
marketing talents were particularly useful in the
large-scale manipulation of language that the campaign
entailed. The Bushites realized, as all ideologues do, that
words create realities, and that the right words can
over whelm any chance of balanced discussion. Guided by
the overtly imperial vision of the Project for a New
American Century (whose members now form the core of
the American administration), the PR companies helped
finesse the language to create an atmosphere of
simmering panic where American imperialism would come to seem
not only acceptable but right, obvious, inevitable and
even somehow kind.
Aside from the incessant 'weapons of mass
destruction', there were 'regime change' (military invasion),
'pre-emptive defense' (attacking a country that is not
attacking you), 'critical regions' (countries we want to
control), the 'axis of evil' (countries we want to
attack), 'shock and awe' (massive obliteration) and 'the
war on terror' (a hold-all excuse for projecting
American military force anywhere).
Meanwhile, US federal employees and military personnel
were told to refer to the invasion as 'a war of
liberation' and to the Iraqi paramilitaries as 'death
squads', while the reliably sycophantic American TV networks
spoke of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' - just as the
Pentagon asked them to - thus consolidating the supposition
that Iraqi freedom was the point of the war. Anybody
questioning the invasion was 'soft on terror' (liberal)
or, in the case of the UN, 'in danger of losing its
relevance'.
When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach
me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me
to lie, but because he thought I should know how it's
done so I would recognize when I was being lied to. I
hope writers such as Rampton and Stauber and others
may have the same effect and help to emasculate the
culture of spin and dissembling that is overtaking our
political establishments.
A longer version of this article will appear in the
new literary magazine, Zembla. Weapons of Mass Deception
by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber is published by
Robinson at £6.99
(c) Brian Eno 2003
http://www.commondreams.com