- 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 mobilise 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
programmes 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 realised, 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 defence' (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 recognise 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.
-
- © Brian Eno 2003
-
- 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
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
-
- http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1020528,00.html
|
