43429271

Middle East Critique Vol. 18, No.
2, 117143, Summer 2009
Social Inuence by Manipulation: A Denition and Case of Propaganda

HAAVARD KOPPANG
Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, Norway
A narrow theory of propaganda has dominated now for decades, perhaps because propaganda has been linked with political extremism. Narrow theories, moreover, can produce trivial conclusions. For example, following World War II, the names of Adolph Hitler and Josef Goebbels became linked with propaganda, which in turn was used synonymously with words like lies, deceit, manipulation, mind control, and brainwashing,1 and there has been a tendency to assume that propaganda no longer exists. A broad theory of propaganda, on the other hand, implies that all persuasion can be seen as propaganda, which may result in scholars ignoring propaganda as an issue altogether. J. Shanahan, for example, referring to L. W. Doobs study of Goebbels, claims that all communication with a motive becomes propaganda.2 If broad theories of propaganda lead to broad denitions and narrow theories to narrow denitions, then one needs to seek a denition that balances between broad and narrow theories, for either extreme may lead to unawareness. Etymologically, propaganda has a very broad base. The Latin verb propagare means to spread or extend in space or to extend in time. The English derivative propagation originally meant simply an extension in time and space. Propaganda thus has a wide application in its original sense. In 1622 the Vatican described its missionary activities overseas as Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, a sense that is lost however in the present debate. Indeed, usage now is restricted to a negative connotation. Even so, when identied with persuasion, particularly organized persuasion, the theoretical scope of propaganda is so extensive that formulating a denition becomes problematic.3
Correspondence Address: Haavard Koppang, Department of Leadership and Organization Management, Norwegian School of Management, Nydalsveien 37, 0484 Oslo, Norway. Email: Haavard.Koppang@bi.no 1 See further G. Jowett and V. ODonnell (1999) Propaganda and Persuasion (California: Sage). 2 J. Shanahan (Ed.) (2001) Propaganda without Propagandists? Six Case Studies in US Propaganda (New Jersey: Hampton Press), p. 4. 3 Jowett and ODonnell, Propaganda, p. 3. ISSN 1943-6149 Print/1943-6157 Online/09/020117-27 q 2009 Editors of Middle East Critique DOI: 10.1080/19436140902989472
118
H. Koppang
E. L. Bernayswartime member of the Committee on Public Information,4 interwar worker and postwar public relations practitionerthrough his 1928 book, Propaganda, is seen as the architect of modern propaganda.5 Despite Bernays attempts to create a socially responsible propaganda,6 his book served as an inspiration for propagandists such as, for example, Goebbels.7 Bernays tried to promote his gospel of propaganda as massmediated democracys last, best hopea version of propaganda for democracy.8 However, when dening propaganda Bernays refers to the Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary, observing that no word in the English language has been so sadly distorted.9 According to Bernays, this distortion occurred during World War I when propaganda took on a decidedly sinister complexion. Bernays argues, furthermore, that propaganda becomes vicious and reprehensible only when its authors deliberately disseminate lies, or when they aim to damage the common good.10 Goebbels, for example, employed propaganda as a tool for political agitation.11 According to narrow theories of propaganda this has come to be the meaning of propagandaLenin, Stalin, and Hitler being the preferred supporting examples. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis The history of US domestic propaganda is one of general unawareness and denial. Even so, there have been notable periods when propaganda was treated with great awareness. After World War I, for example, propaganda became a key term in US social commentary.12 Americans and Europeans became aware that objective information was being mixed with propaganda, and, up to the beginning of World War II, through the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), propaganda analysis ourished.13 Scholarly articles explored the effects of propaganda upon a wide range of communication channels, including news reports, textbooks, press releases, and government promotional campaigns.14 However, around the time of World War II, propaganda analysis gradually was replaced by the new eld of communication research. Propaganda scholars were accused of being
4
5 6
7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14
Refers to the US Committee on Public Information (CPI) that was organized to centralize wartime communication. When the United States entered the war, the CPI assumed the role of chief war propagandist; see J. M. Sproule (1987) Propaganda studies in American social science, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73, p. 63. Bernays also had an interesting European background; According to S. Ewen, Bernays was the double nephew of Sigmund Freud and enjoyed the privileges of bourgeois life when he lived in Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century; see further S. Ewen (1996) PR: A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books). Sproule, Propaganda studies, p. 64. J. M. Sproule (1997) Propaganda and Democracy: The American Experience of Media and Mass Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 56. Ewen, PR, p. 4. Ibid., p. 58. E. L. Bernays, Propaganda, p. 21. Ibid., p. 22. H. D. Lasswell, in Psychopathology and Politics (New York: Viking Press, 1930), describes the connection between agitation and emotion with the following analogy: . . . we may say that an agitator is one who exaggerates the difference between one rather desirable social policy and another, much as the lover, according to Shaw, is one who grossly exaggerates the difference between one woman and another (p. 78). Sproule, Propaganda studies, p. 62. Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., p. 66.
Social Inuence by Manipulation
119
unpatriotic (e.g., by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)), and their social criticism denounced as following a communist line (presaging the approaching atmosphere of McCarthyism). By replacing propaganda analysis with statistical communication research, policy-makers expected double utility, namely, the production of factual ndings and the eradication of troublesome questions about the motives of persuaders.15 The trend was toward the scientic (statistical communication research) and away from the human (emotions and feelings). T. H. Qualter, for example, is critical of the IPAs focus on what he characterizes as a few obvious tricks and gimmicks16 and presents a critique of C. R. Millers seven devices17 and the IPAs simplistic device-identication methods.18 Qualter correctly points out that propaganda is more than simply the message content or the selection of words and phrases. He accuses the IPA of treating propaganda solely as a manipulative device applied to victims who are largely passive and unaware of what was happening to them.19 This notion of unsuspecting gulliblepropagandees, however, is useful, I believe, in an analysis of US presidential propaganda. Yet, Qualter reects the spirit of his age when he demands a shift from content analysis and device identication to the most highly sophisticated computerised techniques.20 Not surprisingly, the terms emotions and feelings are not included in Qualters index. The shift in the United States from propaganda analysis to statistical communication research had a narrowing effect on the denition of propaganda.21 If broad denitions were being dismissed as too general and of little utility, narrow denitions now tended to locate propaganda as a phenomenon of the past. This effectively relegated propaganda studies to outsiders and antiquarians. Trends were working against a critical social analysis, and perceived external threats to US security legitimized the manipulation of modern mass communication.22 Rhetorical consciousness among opinion leaders returned to a denial of domestic propaganda while at the popular level there was a resurgence of propagandee gullibility. Most American propaganda studies were carried out between the wars, and the term propaganda, after the transition to statistical communication research, seems to have been more or less expurgated. In the aftermath of the shift, a general denial of domestic
15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22
Ibid., pp. 7273. T. H. Qualter (1985) Opinion Control in the Democracies (London: Macmillan), p. 110. C. R. Miller (1937) How to detect propaganda, Propaganda Analysis, 1, pp. 57. Millers propaganda devices are still interesting, and include: name-calling (the propagandist calls opponents names such as fascist or communist (or terrorist) to provoke emotions such as hate and fear); glittering generalities (the propagandist employs words denoting virtue, such as truth, freedom, justice etc.); transfer (the propagandist transfers from something we respect to something the propagandist wants us to respect); plain folks (the propagandist as a member of a political or social elite courts the public by appearing to be an ordinary person and thereby wise and good); and card stacking (the propagandist applies half truths, omissions, and distractions to evade facts). Qualter, Opinion Control, p. 129. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., p. 129. See further Sproule, Propaganda studies. Ibid., p. 72.
120
H. Koppang
propaganda followed, although with some notable exceptions. A number of critical studies with references to propaganda did emerge after World War II, but terminology had then adapted to keep in step, for example, with the news and entertainment discourse of British media studies. Ideological critique can be seen in T. Gitlin,23 H. I. Schiller,24 and in J. Habermas critique of instrumental reason.25 At the end of the 1940s, the supposedly neutral words persuasion, communication, and information began to replace propaganda, and following the 1950s the term propaganda domestically disappeared for a decade after 1966.26 It reappeared later, but, as an American phenomenon, propaganda seems to have been of marginal interest. The effect of this disavowal of domestic propagandathrough ideological egalitarian stereotypes such as propaganda does not exist in a democracy and camouaged propagandawas gullible propagandees. Yet we can become co-conspirators in our own self deceit. N. J. OShaughnessy claims that self-deception is not necessarily always motivated by an aversion to some truth, but simply motivated by affection for some particular falsehood.27 In such an atmosphere of willing self-deception, gullibility might be at its height when a US president delivers his State of the Union addresses before Congress.
New Denition Between Narrow and Broad Propaganda Theories I complement, rather than replace, historical contributions to propaganda through a revised denition of propaganda including new theory elements such as moral disengagement. My denition seeks to strike a balance between narrow and broad theories by avoiding perspectives such as political agitation abroad (narrow/disavowal of propaganda) and all communication with a motive is propaganda (broad/unawareness). My approach is to sift denitions of propaganda to elicit the most usable constituents and to apply these constituents to discourse. On the one hand, an element in my denition below, such as hidden agenda, is a sine qua non for propaganda, simply to separate the phenomenon
23
24
25 26 27
Gitlin focuses on the mass media as core systems for the distribution of ideology and avoids the term propaganda. His description of how media functions may be applied as a denition of propaganda. The media bring a manufactured public world into private space. From within their private crevices, people nd themselves relying on the media for concepts, for images of their heroes, for guiding information, for emotional charges, for a recognition of public values, for symbols in general, even for language . . . the media specialize in orchestrating everyday consciousness . . . they certify reality as reality . . . (T. Gitlin (1980) The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmaking of the New Left (California: University of California Press) pp. 12). According to Gitlin, the medias ideology production denes and denes away (the new left) opposition. H. I. Schiller (1973) The Mind Managers (Boston: Beacon Pres) makes several interesting observations on mind control: Where manipulation is the principal means of social control, as it is in the United States, the articulation and renement of manipulative techniques take precedence over other intellectual activities . . . The means of manipulation are many, but clearly, control of the informational and ideational apparatus at all levels is essential (pp. 45). In this context, Schiller cites Richard M. Nixon: Fundamental to our way of life is the belief that when information which properly belongs to the public is systematically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and eventuallyincapable of determining their own destinies (p. 146). J. Habermas (1981) The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press). Sproule, Propaganda, p. 217. N. J. OShaughnessy (2004) Politics and Propaganda: Weapons of Mass Seduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press) p. 47.
121
from other phenomena, e.g., advertising or education. Yet both advertising and education might have hidden agendas on instrumentality. On the other hand, even the narrowest and most precise denition of propaganda has to deal with historical judgment as to whether something was true. Yet with the intention of elaborating a balanced denition, the outcome will be a less precise denition of propaganda, with lesser accuracy to judge whether something is or is not propaganda. However, a need for preciseness and accuracy is no rational excuse for denitional disavowal of current and domestic propaganda. My denition includes a number of possible implications, such as beguiling individual reasoning by activating prejudices and worst case scenarios. If my denition appears negative, it should be remembered that the original meaning of the term propaganda missionary activities overseasis lost in the present debate. In a secular contemporary context, therefore, my denition might be useful in exposing hidden inuences on reasoning and individual decision making in organized mass communication. Here is my proposed denition: Propaganda is organized mass communication, derived from a hidden agenda on mission to conform belief and action by manipulating mechanismsdrawn from a hidden agenda on instrumentalityto circumvent individual reasoning and rational choice. To develop the above denition of propaganda, I have drawn upon several theorists and applied several theory elements. First, propaganda is a type of mass communication employed by an organized group or groups.28 Organized mass communication of propaganda has found different media channels over the years. According to R. E. Hiebert: The gulf War in 1991 has been called the cable-TV war that brought CNN to world attention. The Vietnam War was called the rst television war. World War II was basically a radio war. World War I was termed the rst propaganda war. The Crimean War in the late 19th century was the rst war covered by independent reporters on the battleeld. The 2003 Iraq War perhaps was the rst-ever Internet war [sic] With more than half a billion people worldwide connected to the Internet.29 Yet in my case study (see below) crucial decisions may have been pushed forward by well organized lobby groups with a ready-made approach in the aftermath of 9/11. Individual propagandistsrational intentional actorsare now less evident, perhaps because organized groups, have become subtler and more effective. The terms propagandistpropagandee occurs in the literature, as well as sender-receiver, proponent-respondent or persuader-persuadee. Second, hidden agenda is one way of making a distinction between propaganda and the wider term persuasion. I consider propaganda as a subcategory of persuasion that includes a hidden agenda. Propaganda conceals its agenda, which sets propaganda apart from advertising. Advertising, regardless of hidden agendas, is clear in its intention and
28 29
See further J. Ellul (1973) Propaganda: The Formation of Mens Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books). R. E. Hiebert (2003) Public relations and propaganda in framing the Iraq war: A preliminary review, Public Relations Review, 29, p. 248.
122
H. Koppang
normally does not mislead consumers with its motive, whether in newspaper, radio or television advertising. Education, with its open explicit agenda on mission, also differs from propaganda. However, when it comes to devices, both advertisers and education proponents might activate mechanisms that are hidden for respondents. In that meaning of hidden agenda there is similarity to propaganda. As another part of a hidden agenda, propaganda conceals its devices which must be revealed to counteract propaganda effectiveness.30 K. Johnson-Carte and G. A. Copeland give some interesting examples of propaganda, such as when former US President George W. Bush asked Americas children each to send one dollar to the White House to help feed children in Afghanistan.31 When making the distinction between persuasion as a psychological mechanism and persuasion as a sociological mechanism, one should not ignore the importance of psychological mechanisms for propaganda as another part of a hidden agenda in addition to a vision or an aim. Nevertheless hidden agenda primarily means hidden agenda on mission. It might be claimed that propaganda may be clear about its agenda, that even leaders like Goebbels did not need hidden agendas early in World War II when Germany was winning; Goebbels moral position was straightforward, he told the truth and Germanys enemies told lies.32 In view of the historical record, however, it is not convincing that Goebbels and der Fuhrer lacked any hidden agenda, especially about Jews, when they were winning.33 A more interesting situation arises when the agenda is hidden for both the propagandist and the propagandee. The experts providing premises for decisions and speechwriters may have their own agendas without telling the propagandist, leaving him unaware of what are partial truths or even lies and deceit. Yet the mechanisms that outsmart rational individual reasoning are seen as part of a hidden agenda, mechanisms such as mixtures of argumentative and eristic dialogue, activation of emotions like fear, anger, grief, guilt, and revenge, together with prejudice and patriotism, the use of symbols, activation of we (inside) and them (outside) dichotomies, and nally activating moral disengagement (see below). Thus, hidden agenda refers to a vision of what is to be realized, the content of the message, inclusive mechanisms of conforming belief and action so that the propagandee accepts simplied conclusions even when they are not in line with conclusions based on rational individual and logical reasoning. Third, propaganda conforms belief and action.34 There are several mechanisms that can be employed effectively to suppress rational reasoning, thereby deactivating awareness
30
31
32 33
34
See further A. R. Pratkanis & E. Aronson (2001) Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion (New York: Freeman). K. Johnson-Cartee & G. A. Copeland (2004) Strategic Political Communication: Rethinking Social Inuence, Persuasion, and Propaganda (New York: Rowman & Littleeld), pp. 67. L. W. Doob (1950) Goebbels principles of propaganda, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 14, p. 428. Ideology might be a reason for having a hidden agenda instead of openly claiming complete and exclusive possession of political truth. Among several implications for propaganda that I do not apply explicitly to my denition are Clifford Geertzs contributions to ideology such as: belief-system has priority, which includes dualistic (we-they; those who are not with us are against us); alienative (working to undermine established political institutions); doctrinaire (claiming complete and exclusive possession of political truth and abhorring compromise); totalistic (aiming to order the entire social and cultural life in the image of its ideal); and futuristic (working toward a utopian culmination of history). See further Clifford Geertz (1964) Ideology as a cultural system, in: David E. Apter (Ed.) Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press), pp. 47 75. See further Jowett & ODonnell, Propaganda.
123
of possible biases in reasoning and information.35 In propaganda there is a balance between reasoning (existing beliefs) and approval (belief-formation). Propagandee patriotism (emotions, beliefs, and prejudices) is exploited so as to resonate with the message of the propagandist for belief-formation. Propagandists thus are able to create new beliefs, e.g., that Iraq has built weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Moreover, propaganda as pretence can adapt its message to simplistic propagandee expectations. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky demonstrated how this operates as a kind of selfdeception mechanism among media people.36 A propagandist does not necessarily see his/her message as propaganda, but rather may be convinced of its correctness. The aim of propaganda might be to serve up plausible reasons for a frivolous interpretation, or to justify why some facts are untrue. In addition, affection for some particular falsehood can twist any contrary evidence.37 Manipulation actively employs symbols, such as activation of the Rally Round the Flag effect. For example, A. M. Lee (an IPA representative who, in contrast to Qualters critique of Miller above, did not characterize propaganda as a few tricks and gimmicks) dened propaganda as the use of symbols to forward or oppose something with a public.38 A. R. Pratkanis et al. dene propaganda as the use of images, slogans, and symbols to play on prejudices and emotions.39 G. Jowett and V. ODonnell cite visual symbols of power, e.g., the emotional transfer a speaker receives while standing in front of a huge ag.40 Such power symbols are activated when, for example, the president of the United States delivers his State of the Union Address. Fourth, propaganda is heavily based on another mechanism, namely the combination of argumentation and emotional arousal.41 Emotive language frequently is used to manipulate propagandee response; e.g., to prevent reection about premises and evidence.42 Waltons emotional fallacy theory includes tactics for blocking legitimate
35 36
37 38 39
40 41
42
R. Nozick (1993) The Nature of Rationality (New Jersey: Princeton University Press), pp. 74100. The application of media lters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news objectively and on the basis of professional news values; see further Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. OShaughnessy, Politics, p. 47. A. M. Lee (1953) How to Understand Propaganda (New York: Rinehart), p. 18. A. R. Pratkanis & M. E. Turner (1996) Persuasion and Democracy: Strategies for increasing deliberative participation and enacting social change, Journal of Social Issues, 52, p. 190; and A. R. Pratkanis & E. Aronson (2001) Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use of and Abuse of Persuasion (New York: Freeman), p. 11. Jowett & ODonnell, Propaganda, pp. 293 294. See further D. N. Walton (1992) The Place of Emotion in Argument (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press); and (1997) What is propaganda and what exactly is wrong with it? Public Affairs Quarterly, 11, pp. 383 413. The detailed suffering of a little girl and her kitten can motivate hatred against the Germans, arouse sympathy for the Armenians, make one enthusiastic about the Red Cross, or lead people to give money for support of a home for cats (see E. K. Strong Jr. (1921) Control of propaganda as a psychological problem, The Scientic Monthly, 14, p. 249). The cynical propagandist might use a psycho-trick of a type that R. Dodge mentioned: Person X, having an intense antipathy toward dogs, one day discovers the ladies rest room attendant giving a dog a drink from a communal drinking glass; from that moment, person X no longer could drink from the communal drinking glasses. Dodge claims that all propaganda is capitalized prejudicein this case to capitalize upon person Xs antipathy by allowing her to see the dog drink from the glass. This is a perfect case of propaganda resting on an emotional premise that is the motive force of the process: the derived antipathy represents the goal. See R. Dodge (1920) The psychology of propaganda, Religious Education, 15, p. 244.
124
H. Koppang
dialogue goals. A common feature of Waltons fallacious arguments is the emotional appeal or the speakers ability to arouse and exploit the sentiments and prejudices of a target audience. The following arguments become fallacious and not logically relevant when premises are made psychologically relevant by arousing emotion: argumentum ad populum, an appeal to popular sentiment, often referred to as an appeal to the gallery or mob appeal, where ideas are presented in a strong, theatrical manner and target the most primitive instincts; argumentum ad misericordiam, an appeal to pity to support its conclusion; argumentum ad baculum (baculum, the scepter-symbolized magisterial authority), an appeal to threats, fear, and force implying legal compulsion; argumentum ad hominem, use of personal attacks (a characteristic of propaganda) to effect character assassination; and argumentum ad auctoritate, proof derived from authority.43 Walton operates with 10 characteristics of propaganda, including: indifference to logical reasoning, one-sided argumentation, involvement of persuasion dialogue, justied results, emotive language, and eristic aspect.44 Walton claims that arguments are fallacious when a speaker employs passion rather than reason to reach a conclusion (ad populum) or persuades by arousing sympathy or compassion (ad misericordiam).45 The fallacy occurs when threats or force are employed to effect the acceptance of a conclusion (ad baculum). Fallacious arguments are characterized by the hardening of bias, the aggressive escalation of emotional appeals, the elimination of legitimate dialogue, and the entrapping of respondents in a deceptive judgment position.46 The dissemination of tailormade conclusions and the withholding of information about premises are basic propagandistic devices. Propaganda, moreover, uses the pretense of advancing an argument to conceal the transition from one dialogue type to another.47 For example, the propagandee may not know when premises are psychologically relevant, but not logically relevant, or to what degree premises twist or even falsify the evidence. Propaganda suppresses or ignores evidence that does not advance its purpose.48 Conclusions are distinct and precise and premises opaque and deceptive. All these factors contribute to the ultimate goal of propaganda: to provoke a particular course of propagandee action. Changing belief and gaining approval are always secondary to this ultimate goal.49 From a meta-propagandistic perspective, no speech can reach an audience if it is pure propaganda. Every speech must employ a mixture of truth and falsehood to gain approval. In political debate, for example, the propagandist exploits emotional fallacies to legitimize one-sided
43
44 45
46 47 48 49
Walton, Place of Emotion, pp. 65224, and What is propaganda?, pp. 388392. Other arguments are argumentum ad absurdum, an appeal revealing the absurdity of ones opponents point of view rather than establishing the merits of ones own position; argumentum ad captandum, an appeal based on arousing popular passions; argumentum ad crumenam, an appeal based on money or the promise of prot; argumentum ad inconvienti, an appeal based on the hardship or inconvenience involved; and argumentum ad verecundiam, an appeal to shame based on respect for authority. See E. Ehrlich (1985) Nil Desperandum: A Dictionary of Latin Tags and Useful Phrases (London: Robert Hale). Walton, What is propaganda?, pp. 396400. According to Walton, a fallacy is an argument that seems valid but is not. Fallacy, from the Latin fallacia meaning deceit, trick, treachery, stratagem, artice, craft or intrigue (see Chambers Murray (1989) LatinEnglish Dictionary (London: John Murray) p. 263. Walton, The Place of Emotion, p. 264. See Walton, What is propaganda? Ibid., p. 395. Ibid.
125
arguments. However, emotional appeals cannot be pursued too aggressively (a fact of which Bush was clearly aware in his presidential speeches). A propagandistic speech is therefore often a combination of real and fallacious arguments (fallacious arguments being not logically relevant and even contradictory to evidence) and, as such, is a mixture of argumentative dialogue and eristic dialogue, the latter involving a disputation or polemics that aggressively attack or refute the enemy.50 According to Walton, eristic dialogue has three characteristics. First, there is no interest in rules of critical discussionattack and defense are all that matter. Secondly, there is no interest in achieving knowledge or seeking the truth. Finally, there is no openness from any of the parties involved and both opponents intend to remain antagonists no matter what happens. Eristic dialogue appears to be like a critical discussion presenting logical reasoning and arguments, both to blame the other party for being illogical and for trying to occupy the higher moral standard. These tactical moves are mainly deceptive and involve cunning and pretence.51 Propaganda, as a special kind of persuasion, manipulates the truth to conceal its shift from one dialogue type to another.52 There is, however, another fallacious argument that has special interest, namely argumentum ad ignorantiam. This might be a type of argument that is easy to manipulate and twist so that it comes out the preferred way. A proponent can argue that a proposition is true since it is not proven to be false. Or the other way around: The proposition is false because it is not been proven to be true, e.g., there has to be a ghost in my house because it is not proved that there arent any ghosts.53 Again to be turned around, there are no ghosts because no one ever has proven that there are any. Argumentum ad ignorantiam seems to be a Pandoras Box where one can nd whatever evidence one looks for within the category of evil, presenting it as convincing argument. Above all argumentum ad ignoriantiam seems to be a type of anything goes and does not really build on a logical argument or reasoning, but rather on the knowledge base of a reasoner.54 Fifth, if the propagandee should have qualms about human rights violations, the moral disengagement mechanism can be employed.55 The disengagement might redene harmful conduct as honorable by moral legitimization, exoneration comparison and sanitizing language.56 This displaces responsibility and minimizes scruples of conscience by attributing blame to the victimized. One then can justify, for example, the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The modes of moral disengagement included moral sanctioning and lethal means, disavowal of personal responsibility for detrimental effects accompanying military campaigns, minimization of civilian casualties, and attribution of blame to and dehumanization of ones foes.57 Mechanisms of moral disengagement are
50 51 52 53 54 55
56
57
Ibid. Walton, The Place of Emotion, pp. 214 216. Ibid. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. A. Bandura (1999) Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, pp. 193209. A. Bandura (2004), The role of selective moral disengagement in terrorism and counterterrorism, in: F. M. Mogahaddam & M. J. Marsella (Eds.) Understanding Terrorism: Psychological Roots, Consequences and Interventions (Washington DC: American Psychological Association Press), pp. 121150. A. Bandura (2006) Mechanisms of moral disengagement in support of military force: The impact of Sept. 11, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25, p. 141.
126
H. Koppang
important to activate mechanisms of moral disengagement in propaganda that minimizes the detrimental effects of using military force. In addition, detrimental effects might be transformed into euphemistic language.58 The purpose of euphemistic language is to make harmful conduct seem respectable. For example, soldiers waste people rather than kill them; bombing missions are depicted as servicing the target; bombs killing civilians are converted to collateral damage; and misdirected missiles red by ones own forces are described as friendly re.59 Finally, both simplicity and repetition are basic. Even in narrow theories of propaganda these points are included. For example, Adolph Hitler said: The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right that it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and uninchingly . . . As soon as our own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of right on the other side, the foundation of doubt in our own right has been laid.60 Similarly, Pierre Proudhon wrote in a 1846 letter to Karl Marx: Let us never consider a question as exhausted, and when we have used our last argument, lets begin again, if need be, with eloquence and irony.61 Case of Presidential Propaganda This analysis now will focus on Bushs speeches after September 11, 2001, his State of the Union Addresses in 2002, 2003, and 2004, and his September 20, 2001, address to a joint session of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. Additionally, I will draw upon other sources, inside and outside the Bush administration. Due to the inuence the president has over the US media, propaganda elements in his speeches naturally are of interest. An important question is whether the president himself is susceptible to domestic and international propaganda that reinforces his own prejudices. This susceptibility might be manipulated by a small but powerful coterie attached to the president in order to advance its own hidden agenda. That is to say, hidden agendas can have a decisive effect and the key concept to understanding this effect is propaganda.62
58
59 60 61
62
Gore Vidal (2002) Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Te So Hated (New York: Thunders Mouth Press) pp. 22 41, gives a 20-page around-the-world overview of such moral disengagement and euphemistic language in current US operations, completed operations, and operations from the cold war area400 American operations during the last three decenniums. The different names of the operations are themselves a study in euphemistic terms, such as Provide Relief, Restore Hope, Continue Hope (Somalia, 199293), Shining Presence (Israel, Dec. 1998), Desert Fox (Iraq, Feb.Dec. 1998), etc. Bandura, The role. Adolph Hitler (192527) Mein Kampf, 2 vols. (Munchen: Franz Eher), pp. 182 183. Pierre Joseph, Proudhon letter to Karl Marx, 17 May 1846. Available at http://www.marxists.org/reference/ subject/economics/proudhon/letters/46 o5 17.htm (accessed 31 March 2009). J. M. Sproule (1987) Propaganda studies in American social science: The rise and fall of the critical paradigm, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73, p. 65.
127
From the outset there was a move to foster public condence, starting with Bushs national address on September 20, 2001, and, after a short time there was military action in Afghanistan and pressure for a domestic antiterrorism lawthe so- called Patriotic Act. Two further initiatives were the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the war against Saddam Husseins regime in Iraq in 2003.63 Although the president apparently did not have a plan of toppling Saddam, before or immediately after 9/11, some ofcials in his administration had a ready-made approach. G. T. Allison presents decision models that emerged from the Cuban Missile Crisis.64 Two of the three models focus on President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev, not as two single actors sitting at a chess table, but rather as groups of advisers around the main players as well as behind the scenes. If there is validity to Les Paynes claims that George W. Bush was the least articulate president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, the most uninformed since Gerald Ford, and the most provincial since Warren G. Harding,65 then Bush needed more assistance than any other president. That is to say, in the Bush administration, speechwriters and advisors were more inuential than ever. People around the chess table and behind the scenes might regard a remote and uninformed president as the best opportunity and the best medium for access to sending out organized mass-communication with hidden agendas. In fact, Bushs speeches seem to be highly crafted rhetorical pieces designed to impress an audience. In his September 20, 2001, address to a joint session of Congress, one nds both simplicity and several repetitions. The phrase we have seen occurs several times, e.g., we have seen the unfurling of ags. Again at the beginning of the same speech there are several other repetitions, such as we will not forget, as in the phrase we will not forget South Korean children gathering to pray outside our embassy in Seoul. Repetitions of freedom are accompanied by simplications and dissemination of conclusions, such as our freedom is at stake, not just Americas freedom, this is the worlds ght. The term freedom provides essential structure for this speech as there are seven instances of the word freedom distributed evenly throughout it, perhaps to create the impression of control within a wellorganized composition. In the passage below one sees the indifference of patriotism to truth, and propagandas characteristic eristic dialogue shift from reason to passion. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us. The in-group/out-group dichotomy depictedeither you are with us or you are with the terroristsutilizes dualistic simplifying. We are the heroes, and they (the outsiders) are the terrorists. The speech plays on the emotions of grief and anger, as in the sentence: Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. The speech also plays upon the envy and the hate of the enemy. By posing questions of an introspective nature and then answering the questions in terms familiar to all Americans, the president appears to
63
64 65
Sue John Locket, et al. (2007) Going public, crisis after crisis: The Bush administration and the press from September 11 to Saddam, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, p. 197. See G. T. Allison (1971) Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown). Les Payne (2003) Bible-Thumping War Drums. Available at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/ 0309-01.htm (accessed March 30, 2009).
128
H. Koppang
explain how the enemy thinks. The answer is unilaterally simplied and indifferent to logical reason and argumentation. By twisting the evidence, propaganda ensures that conclusions come out just one waythe desired way. Why do they hate us? They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. (Address to a Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001) The specious introspection of questions such as, Why do they hate us, avoids an analysis of possible American guilt and instead facilitates American moral disengagement. Ones own guilt thoughnormally arousing a desire to make restitution for misdeeds and to repair a self-image that has been tarnished by a transgressionis avoided.66 Similarly, the presidents moral disengagement is based on moral justication, dehumanization and the attribution of blame to the enemy.67 The higher the moral disengagement, the stronger is public support for retaliatory strikes against suspected terrorists abroadfor example, the aerial bombardment of Iraq. Bandura argues that moral disengagement completely mediated the effect of the terrorist attack.68 Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay (followed by applause from the audience, State of the Union Address, January 2002.) The above-noted applause is a further example of moral disengagement. By arousing patriotism and prejudice, and the emotions of revenge and pride, moral disengagement suppresses legitimate moral engagement on behalf of the prisoners, especially for American Muslims. Bush preached vengeance against Osama bin Laden and demonized Al Qaeda and countries harboring terrorists. In contrast, he heroized Lisa Beamer, America, and Great Britain. That is to say, the president set forth enemies and allies along with their accompanying dehumanization or glorication. Propaganda provokes group action by arousing the emotions of group members. According to Walton, this often is achieved through a combination of argumentum ad populum, which appeals to group identication and solidarity, and argumentum ad hominem, which attacks the enemy or the opposition as hostile, blameworthy, and dishonest opponents who cannot be reached by reasoning.69 In the days immediately following September 11, there were no dissenting voices to disturb group solidarity. The world consisted solely of an in-group and an out-group, where the uncivilized latter committed injustices upon the civilized former.
66
67
68
69
See further A. R. Pratkanis (1999) Propaganda, in: D. Levinson, J. Ponzetti & P. Jorgensen (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Human Emotions (New York: Macmillan), pp. 536539. See A. Bandura 1999, Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), pp. 193 209. A. Bandura 2006, Mechanisms of moral disengagement in support of military force, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25, pp. 141 165. D.N. Walton 1992, Place of Emotion in Argument (University Park, Pennsyluvania: Pennsylvania State University Press).
129
By using argumentum ad populum and, most forcefully, argumentum ad baculum, Bush dispels all doubt as to who are the winners and who dictates the terms. Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al-Qaida who hide in your land . . . hand over the terrorists or . . . share in their fate. (September 20, 2001 address to joint Session of Congress) Bushs January 2002 State of the Union address is well known for its claims that Americas enemies are evil and violent. One of Millers propaganda devices is namecalling.70 In name-calling, the propagandist calls opponents names such as communist, fascist, evil, or terrorist. By denition, evil people do not do the right things. Moreover, the intention of phrases, such as that below, seems to be to stigmatize persons, groups, or countries, thereby arousing emotions such as hate and fear. They were as wrong as they are evil. Strongly Inuenced Media People An interesting fact to emerge from my analysis was the extent to which prominent media gures were involved in spreading the propaganda of Bushs speeches. After September 11, domestic propaganda seemed suddenly to be everywhere.71 An Internet search revealed a million hits for the keywords United States and propaganda. A catchy phrase actualized the propaganda: war on terrorism. The British had earlier used this phrase to describe their efforts to counter Zionist attacks on their security forces and civilians in the British Mandate of Palestine during the 1940s. A militant Zionist group, the Irgun, introduced into Palestine the practice of placing bombs in large crowds and on buses to force the British into letting the Jewish community in Palestine establish an independent state.72 The Bush administration came in for sharp criticism for using the war on terrorism as a pretext to persecute political opponents and for presenting stilted representations of terrorists qua diabolical foes. For example: Terrorists are wicked Islamists, religious fundamentalists and fanatics, who commit unspeakable acts of mass murder and mayhem against innocent civilians, including women and children; they are power-hungry thugs with a dark and dim vision of the world; they would remake the Middle East in their own grim image; lacking heart or conscience, these Saddamists rape, torture, and murder their hapless victims . . . the whole world is their battleground; their barbarism cannot be appeased or their hatred assuaged.73
70 71
72
73
See C. R. Miller (1937) How to detect propaganda, Propaganda Analysis, 1, pp. 5 7. J. J. Kimble (2005) Wither propanda? Agonism and the engineering of consent, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 91, p. 201. John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt (2007) The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux), p. 102. R. L. Ivie (2007) Fighting terror by rite of redemption and reconciliation, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, p. 233.
130
H. Koppang
After 9/11 the administration was proactive, establishing the people, word, and ideas that frame, or set the parameter of, the debate.74 Then, American journalists looked to the president and administration to take the lead in a perception of crisis.75 For example, Tom Brokaw of NBC News quoted the president as saying in response to the attack: Freedom has been attacked by a faceless coward. Freedom will be defended. The drama intensied in Brokaws Nightly New Cast with the president saying that . . . terrorists [have] declare[d] war on the United States.76 Dan Rather of CBS News quoted Bush as saying: We will nd and punish those responsible for the cowardly events.77 The way the president took the lead after September 11 seemed to produce dramatic results, even in academia. The respected Time Magazine columnist and Boston University professor of journalism, L. Morrow, in his article The Case for Rage and Retribution, continued in the same vein as his 2003 book, Evil: An Investigation, with its chapters on Gourmets and Monkey Brains, Us and Them, Why Do They Do It, and Satan Makes Them Do It. The call for revenge in Bushs speeches seemed to openly encourage the victimization of Arabs and Muslims. Morrow seemed inspired by this: America needs to relearn . . . why human nature has equipped us all with a weapon . . . called hatred . . . Anyone who does not loathe the people who did these things, and the people who cheer them on, is too philosophical for decent company . . . If what happened on Tuesday does not give Americans the political will needed to exterminate men like Osama bin Laden and those who conspire with them in evil mischief, then nothing ever will and we are in for a procession of black Tuesdays . . . The presidency of George W. Bush begins now . . . The worst times, as we see, separate the civilized . . . from the uncivilized . . . Let the civilized toughen up, and let the uncivilized take their chance in the game they started.78 Eisman claims that, after September 11, American news media degenerated into an irresponsible organ of patriotic propaganda.79 But is it plausible that it was the Presidential Ofce that became an irresponsible organ of patriotic propaganda and that this affected the news media and other parts of society, even academia? Presidential speeches have a great impact because they reach a broad audience. Bushs speeches seemed to be replete with loaded terms and reasoning that was not based on logic, although we do not know how much of this came from groups behind the scenes with hidden agendas and ready-made approaches. An interesting claim is that without propaganda their hidden agenda would not be feasible. It also is interesting that seven years after September 11, during the last weeks of the 2008 presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain, it was assumed that voters affected by some particular falsehood might easily be decisive in the voting. For example, one Republican farmer in Ohio insisted that: The bottom line is, he [Obama]
74 75 76
77 78 79
Sue John Lockert, et al., Going Public, p. 201. Ibid. A. Eisman (2003) The media of manipulation: Patriotism and propagandamainstream news in the United States in the weeks following September 11, Critical Quarterly, 45, p. 57. Ibid. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 55.
131
isnt one of us and Im scared to death of him. Furthermore, he continued, [g]uns, abortion, homosexuality, religion, protecting Israel, taxes . . . I worry what he would do to this country. Even the Republican vice presidental candidate, Sarah Palin, according to the media, played on prejudices by saying that Obama had a history of palling around with terrorists.80 The Broader Context David Frum, who writes for the neoconservative paper The Weekly Standard and is afliated with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is the architect of the phrase axis of evil, which Bush used in his January 2002 State of the Union Address. This catchy phrase institutionalizes evil as being located in three countries and also reveals a hidden agenda toward Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Furthermore, it implied an appeal for an attack on these countries: States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. Within one year of this address, Iraq would become the rst evil regime against which the Bush administration launched a pre-emptive attack. That war demonstrates that expressions like axis of evil and weapons of mass destruction were carefully formatted to activate beliefs and behaviors in the aftermath of 9/11. If a catchy phrase such as WMD activates worst case prospects, it is well designed to circumvent rational reasoning, and it enables the few to govern the many effectively,81 or as depicted by Pratkanis and Turner, propaganda results in the manipulation of the mob by the elite.82 Bushs rhetoric had a religious aspect. Indeed, he identies with the Protestant Evangelical and born-again Christian movements.83 A. Rojecki claims that Bush, in a 2004 press conference, clearly revealed the imprint of an evangelizing religious faith on his foreign policy: Freedom is the Almightys gift to every man and woman in this world.84 In one speech a few days after September 11, Bush even used the term crusade when vowing to avenge the Twin Towers attacks. Whether or not the president used the word intentionally, it triggers associations of the Crusades that the Western World pitched against Muslims beginning in the eleventh century. C. T. Maier wrote about medieval propagandists who preached in order to recruit participants for the Crusades; by using the term crusade, Bush, with his God-on-our-side position, easily may have mixed up the background Maier describes. In the thirteenth century alone, crusades were fought against Muslims in Spain, Africa, the Holy Land and Apulia . . . These crusades were usually announced by sermons. Propagandists preached in order to recruit participants and collect
80 81 82 83
84
Herald Tribune, October 14, 2008. Qualter, Opinion Control, p. 124. Pratkanis & Turner, Persuasion, p. 191. See A. Rojecki (2008) Rhetorical alchemy: American exceptionalism and the war on terror, Political Communication, 25, pp. 6788. Ibid., p. 69.
132
H. Koppang
money for the crusade. Sermons also marked the departure of a crusader or a crusade army . . . 85 A few days after the March 11, 2004, terror attack in Madrid, which possibly led to a new Spanish government, one terror group issued a message stating that it wanted to stop the crusaders. In June of the same year, Bush claimed that no act of America explains the terrorist violence. Subsequently, in December 2005, Bush claimed that this government does not torture . . . whether it be here at home or abroad.86 Perhaps for Bush, crusade simply meant that Americans imposed their civilization on the Middle East, even by murderous means such as torture that spawn more terrorism and even at the cost of their own liberties at home.87 In the course of his speeches, the president rhetorically transformed fear into joy and chaos into order, concluding by alluding to God. The worlds superpower declared for its own side Deus supra nos. B. Vivian claims that in the public memorial services held in New York City on September 11, 2002, Bush concluded the services by substituting the United States for the light (Jesus Christ, the Messiah) referred to in the New Testament Book of John: I believe there is a reason that history has matched this nation with this time . . . This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.88 That is to say, the mightiest secular power in globo protects and is protected by Almighty God supra nos. Two further quotes below call forth a kind of Gott mit uns position. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom and may He watch over the United States of America. (Address to a Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001) We Americans . . . know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our condence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America. (State of the Union Address, January 2003) In the Internet debate leading up to the invasion of Iraq, a religious studies professor from Colorado wrote that nothing can stop a religious man from doing Gods work, and when Bush stands with God, those who oppose his war must be down below with Satan.89 General William Boykin professed that America was ghting Satan in Islamic Iraq on behalf of the real, Christian God.90 Another entry proclaimed Goodbye Jack Daniels, Hello Jesus in reference to Bushs new faith as a born-again Christian. Bush was quoted at a press conference as saying, I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength.
85
86 87 88
89
90
C. T. Maier (2003) Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 3. As cited in Ivie, Fighting Terror, p. 235. Ibid. B. Vivian (2006) Neoliberal Epideictic: Rhetorical form and Commemorative Politics on September 11, 2002, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 92, p. 17. Les Payne, Bible-Thumping War Drums. Available at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0310-01.htm (accessed 31 March 2009). Ivie, Fighting terror, p. 224.
133
If we were to commit our troops . . . I would pray for their safety. And I would pray for the safety of innocent Iraqi lives as well . . . I pray for peace, I pray for peace.91 Newsweek reporters wrote in The Gospel According to George that the president believed his faith would guide him in Iraq. The president preached time and again . . . that he would lead by faith and vision into holy battle in order to bestow freedom on an otherwise evil world.92 It is possible that the president rationalized war for himself and on behalf of the American people in a kind of simplied and traditional theological context. This would help to make the activities of killing appear civilized, humane, and expressive of important values such as loyalty, freedom . . . to rationalize war as in the service of the greater glory of God.93
Disregard for Facts As a born-again Christian with a literal interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, it is unlikely that the president lied deliberately before the Congress and the American people. However, not telling the truth without knowing it is another category. Relevant in this respect is Elluls argument that there is no morality in the propaganda game,94 and Waltons idea that propaganda intends to mislead by manipulative and deceptive tactics with indifference to truth.95 That is to say, while the president, however sincerely, may have provided the broad issues a speech should address, presidential speeches were written by speechwriters. The president may not have been lying on WMD in Iraq, but rather he was a gofer for more or less unidentied groups, presenting their lies. In a 2007 Internet interview about presidential lies, Carl M. Cannon dened telling a lie as saying something you know to be wrong but saying it anyway.96 P. Ekman says there are two ways to lie: concealing and falsifying: In concealing the liar withholds some information without actually saying anything untrue. In falsifying, an additional step is taken . . . he presents false information as if it were true.97 Ekman argues that it often is necessary to combine concealing and falsifying to pull off the deceit, although one might get away just with concealment. Interesting is Ekmans denition of leakage: When a liar mistakenly reveals the truth, I call it leakage. When a liars behavior suggests he or she is lying without revealing the truth, I call it a deception clue.98 Ekman illustrates his points by a famous example, saying that if Chamberlain had detected any deception clues, he would have known Hitler was lying, and of course it would have been useful to obtain leakage of just what his plans for conquest were, or how far Hitler intended to go.99 Saddam Hussein was called the Hitler of Baghdad, and how far he intended to go was
91 92 93 94 95 96
97
98 99
Available at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0310-01.htm (accessed). Ibid., p. 224. Ibid., p. 239. Ellul, Ethics of propaganda. Walton, What is propaganda. The Atlantic Online January 2007. Available at http:/www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200701u/ cannon-interview (accessed 31 March 2009). P. Ekman (1992) Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (New York: W.W. Norton), p. 28. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 40.
134
H. Koppang
open, as we shall see, for argumentum ad ignorantiam and reasoning derived from a hidden agenda. Again, the president at the chess table perhaps did not know much about what was going on behind the scenes. Cannon suggests that Bushs claims about WMD stem more from Bushs disregard for the facts than from dishonesty. Without compunction, Bush could read from a manuscript that twisted the evidence so that conclusions always come out only one way. Motivationally biased beliefsA. R. Meles denition of self-deception100allowed Bush quite innocently, and without lying, to declare that Saddam Hussein, the Hitler of Baghdad, was hiding WMD and that he would not hesitate to use them against America or, even more likely, to attack the Holy Land. Furthermore, the presidents disregard for the facts provided an opportunity for the speechwriters to put forward their hidden agenda on WMD. We do not know how informed the president was, but as long as he disregarded the facts, he may well have been uninformed about the fact that there were no WMD in Iraq. Then he could speak with sincerity about WMD, based on condence in those behind the scenes, with their hidden agenda, which they even kept from the president. If the president in sincerity was warning against WMD in Iraq, he might have been self-deceived, but thereby more convincing than a lying proponent. If so, this was a nice solution to a need for a hidden agenda and innocence for the proponent who activated worse case prejudices for many respondents.
Fallacious Arguments for War Based on dubious information from groups behind the scenes, WMD were mentioned explicitly as the reason for invading Iraq: The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. (State of the Union Address, January 2002) In June 2002 the president went public in a national address proposing a Department of Homeland Security and giving the impression of an important initiative from the Bush administration to protect the nation. However, the president did not seem to be all that certain in his view about a war in Iraq, even if his speeches seemed to be going combative in one direction. In the last months of 2002 and early 2003, the president came up with statements that could be seen as leakage or simply having difculties in making up his mind about a complex matter. By October 2002, however, Bushs attitude had changed, and he now said: Saddam Hussein has thumbed his nose at the world. Hes a threat to the neighborhood. Hes a threat to Israel. Hes a threat to the United States of America . . . and the best way to deal with him is for the world to rise up and say, youll disarm, and well disarm you. And if notif at the very end of the day nothing happensthe United States, along with others, will act.101
100
101
A.R. Mele (1987) Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-deception, and Self-control (Oxford: Oxford University Press). K. Hall Jamieson (2007) Justifying the war in Iraq: What the Bush administrations uses of evidence reveal, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, pp. 253 254.
135
Bush decided to seek UN Security Council authorization for war. However, in a White House press meeting on the last day of December 2002, Bush replied to a reporter: You said were headed to war in IraqI dont know why you say that. I hope were not headed to war in Iraq.102 During this period in the reasoning leading up to the decision to go to war against Iraq, central fallacious arguments were used, such as argumentum ad hominem (e.g., Hitler of Baghdad, we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons), argumentum ad populum (e.g., this country is still in danger, they might attack us again), argumentum ad baculinum (e.g., well disarm you), and argumentum ad auctoritate (our allies dont know all we know). Bushs speeches used several fallacious arguments for invasion. When appealing to the allegedly great risk of not taking action, additionally a claimed connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda was established. Saddams WMD was the decisive argument based on a twist of argumentum ad ignorantiam. How was argumentum ad ignorantiam twisted on issues of WMD in Iraq?
The Decisive Fallacious Argument The two basic congurations of the argument are: We cannot know that A is false, therefore it is true, or we cannot know that A is true, therefore it is false. Since we could not know whether Iraq had eliminated biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, therefore Iraq was continuing to develop them. This reasoning is fallacious because the absence of evidence and lack of evidence is turned around to become evidence of absencea semantic trick.103 On absence of evidence in the courtroom, the accused is judged according to the assumption of innocence in law. This is a kind of positive prejudice, so if one does not know whether the accused is guilty, one thinks he is not guilty until the prosecutor has proved the opposite and the judge has accepted that proof. On our own behalf or that of those we treat in a friendly manner, we do not want to create fear or maintain fear. Thus, there is no ghost in my or your house because no one ever has proven that there are any. If a kind of innocence in law assumption had been applied to Saddam Husseins regime, the conclusion would have been that there were no WMD. Yet the conclusion was the other way around. If we do not nd evidence for WMD in Iraq, then we are sure that there are WMD. This is argumentum ad ignorantiam. The point is that the burden of proof has shifted. We do not know whether Iraq has WMD, but nobody can say it is wrong. Nobody can prove a negative.104 A father thoughtfully could say to his son that no cat has two tails, but we do know whether one cat has one tail more than no cat, so one cat has three tails. The son of the Danish physicist Niels Bohr found a simple answer after reecting on this story: Here is no catso where are the two tails? Bohr did not answer. We do know with absolute certainty that no cat has two tailsand it cannot be proven that it has not. Why shift the burden of proof? The answer to that is not as simple as We dont want the smoking gun to be the mushroom cloud.105 However, if a variation of the mushroom cloud had been used to
102 103
104 105
Ibid. D. Zarefski (2007) Making the case for war: Colin Powell at the United Nations, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, p. 287. Hall Jamieson, Justifying the war, p. 255. Condoleezza Rice, quoted in Zarefski, Making the case, p. 289.
136
H. Koppang
legitimize regime change in Iraq only, it would have been as credible as it had not been applied consistently to other potential nuclear states during the last decades.106 Yet the argumentum ad ignorantiam has a great potential for being twisted in a preferred direction when shifting the burden of proof. Then, if no one knows any existence of X in Y, still no one can deny it as a possibility. Thus, we cannot deny ghosts in Georges house or WMD in Iraq, as long as no one can prove that they are not there or Saddam does not prove there are no WMD. An intellect, with the help of semantic tricks, such as we know what we dont know, might give the impression that we know what we go for.107 Important, though, is that know is used as aequivoce (in Latin, aequus means equal, and voce, sound), that is to say, equal words with different meanings. In we know what we dont know, know means both respectively identify/experience/see and believe/suspect. It is a pretty long distance between identify and suspect. In any event, comprehensive group-think processes between media, the Bush administration, and several organizations seemed to have produced ever more conclusive evidence during the months before the invasion. For example, We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the House Armed Services Committee on Iraq, on September 18, 2002. I think the burden now falls on Saddam Hussein . . . said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher in December 2002. Why We Know Iraq Is Lying was the title of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rices January 2003 op-ed in The New York Times. And later that month, Bush told the country in his State of the Union Address that our intelligence sources tell us that he [Saddam Hussein] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Just before the US invasion in March 2003, Vice President Richard Cheney stated about the Iraqi leader on the TV program Meet the Press that we know hes out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons. . . . we believe he has, in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons. Note in most of these quotes the frequent use of we know and/or we believe, with the later phrase probably meant for public opinion to register as we know. The Bush-administration constructed a catch 22 for Iraq: If Hussein declared he had no WMD, then we know he once again is misleading the world; if he indicates that he has WMD, then we know again that he has deceived the world.108 A last aspect here of argumentum ad ignorantiam, twisted in the direction of wishful thinking, is found in the autobiography of General Tommy Franks, who claims that the issue is not whether the source of the intelligence information was telling the truth, but whether George Tenet, Colin Powell, and President Bush believed that the information was true. I believe they did. I know I did.109
The Propagandizing Few and the President To understand the development of President Bushs propaganda after 9/11 and how the hidden agenda was realized, it is elucidating to be aware of groups behind the scenes for
106 107 108 109
Ibid., p. 290. Senator R. Bennet, R-Utah, quoted in Hall Jamieson, Justifying the war, p. 262. For Fleishers December 2, 2002, press conference remarks, see ibid., p. 258. Quoted in ibid., p. 252.
137
whom toppling Saddam Hussein was an obsession. Yet these people seemed to believe that the best way to achieve their goal was by keeping their vision of a new Middle East as a hidden agenda, giving the impression that WMD was the ulterior motive. What they required for toppling Saddam Hussein, then, was necessary fallacious arguments, manipulation of intelligence data, and a president with disregard for the facts. The citations below, from Mearsheimer & Walts above-cited The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, demonstrate examples of fallacious arguments and activation of worst case prospects, including appeals without argumentation that among supporters might be perceived as informal commands. In August 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Knesset that Iraq was the greatest danger facing Israel (p. 234). Foreign Minister Shimon Peres claimed that the campaign against S. Hussein is a must (p. 236), and in May 2002 he said that Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden (p. 234). In November 2002, an Israeli scholar wrote in The Los Angeles Times that all who condemn the 1930 appeasement of Germany should reect long and hard on whether a failure to act today against Iraq will one day be viewed the same way (p. 236). This is a threatening eristic dialogue, strongly suggesting that people who oppose invading Iraq might be perceived as appeasers, as happened to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, for future generations to come. The Jerusalem Post had a clear-cut comment, claiming that ousting Saddam is the linchpin of the war on terrorism (p. 237). Israeli politician Benymin Netanyahu wrote in the Wall Street Journal: Today nothing less than dismantling his [Saddams] regime will do (p. 237). In 2006, former US President Bill Clinton said that every Israeli politician he knew believed Saddam Hussein was so great a threat that he should be removed even if he did not have WMD (p. 237). The real argument was not WMD, but to eliminate a regional rival, but that argument would not sell the war to a skeptical US public.110 The pro-Israel politicians had been urging Saddam Husseins overthrow since early 1998 when a group of neoconservatives sent a letter to President Clinton calling for the Iraqi leaders removal from power. The signatories included John Bolton, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz (pp. 243 244). After George W. Bush selected Wolfowitz to be the Deputy Secretary of Defense (January 2001), the Jerusalem Post commented that the Jewish and pro-Israel communities are jumping with joy, because Wolfowitz was known as the most hawkish pro-Israel voice in the Administration (p. 239). Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives were swift in linking Iraqs government to 9/11. Already, on September 15, 2001, Wolfowitz, in a meeting with Bush, advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even if there was no evidence that Iraq was involved in the attacks on Twin Towers (p. 246). In 2003, the year the Iraq war started, the Jerusalem Post named Wolfowitz as Man of the Year (p. 239), and Israels ambassador to the UN jokingly described Bolton as a secret member of Israels own team at the United Nations (p. 240).
110
A memorandum to guide key Israelis and pro-Israel US leaders in public statements about the war stated: If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America (Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, p. 238). In the Jerusalem Post, Israelis were cautioned to be more circumspect because the US media was portraying Israel as trying to goad the administration into war (ibid., p. 429, n. 50).
138
H. Koppang
The reasoning and the appeals that the pro-Israeli lobby groups and media came up with for war against Iraq followed the same themes as those given by Israeli politicians. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are examples of active lobby-groups. In the Jewish Weeks mid-December 2002 edition, editor and publisher Gary Rosenblatt wrote that a war is an opportunity to rid the world of a dangerous tyrant who represents a particular threat to Israel, adding that when a despot announces his evil intentions, believe him. Thats one of the lessons we should have learned from Hitler and the Holocaust (p. 242). The eristic dialogue presented the same language as the Israelisreferences to the 1930s and Munich; Saddam was the Hitler of Baghdad, and comparing those opposing the war to appeasers like Chamberlain. Since neither Israeli leaders nor their US supporters wanted their position to be known, a war against Iraq had to be presented as one to protect US interests and security. The combination of effective interest groups behind the scenes applying argumentum ad ignorantiam on WMD in Iraq by shifting the burden of proof, frightening the nation with slogans like Hitler of Baghdad, and, above all, having inuential neoconservatives and supporters in formal government positions, led in the preferred direction. However, to start a war based on the proclaimed presence of WMDwhich Iraq deniedintelligence information had to be assembled. When one is looking at some of the comprehensive documentation on how intelligence was used to justify war, the occurrence of hidden agendas is impressive. For example, one source described how Iraqi deceptions were spliced together by a Shiite student and published by an Israeli think tank that was advocating for war.111 Mearsheimer and Walt cite a New York Times article as stating Israeli intelligence played a hidden role in convincing Wolfowitz that he couldnt trust the CIA, and this dissatisfaction helped cause him to rely on Ahmed Chalibi for intelligence . . . The neoconservatives in the Pentagon and the White House not only relied heavily on Chalibi and his fellow exiles for intelligence about Iraq they also championed him as Iraqs future leader after Saddam was gone (p. 251). Chalibi promised to rebuild the pipeline that once ran from Haifa in Israel to Mosul in Iraq (p. 252). Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles had strong ties to Israeli intelligence, which led to the creation of an ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharons ofce in Israel specically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam Husseins Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorize (quoted from The Guardian, p. 251). In advance of the US-led invasion, Iraq allowed weapon inspectors to return. The information they gathered was not in line with the evidence that justied war. Professional inspectors like Hans Blix and Mohammed El-Baradei came up with serious doubts about the intelligence information.112 After the invasion and the revelation that there were no WMD in Iraq the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Israeli Knesset released separate reports revealing that much of the intelligence Israel gave to the Bush administration was false (pp. 235 236). In May 2003, as Bush was announcing his mission accomplished speech on the US aircraft-carrier Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Friedman was writing in the New York
111 112
Zarefski, Making the Case for War, p. 294. Hall Jamieson, Justifying the war, p. 266.
139
Times: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at the moment within a ve-block radius of this ofce [in Washington, DC], who, if you exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened (p. 253). If this statement is valid, then there seems to be a need for a renaissance of propaganda analysis as a way for the many to counteract and uncover the control of the few. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that Israel and its supporters, through their effective methods for dominating public discourse, still would have been advocates of the war, even if the 25 persons referred to above had been exiled. The dominant pro-Israeli lobby, the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) seemed to be inuential on Capitol Hill in terms of promoting war with Iraq, sending out a message that any senator or representative who challenged AIPACs agenda on Iraq risked being targeted in his or her re-election campaign (p. 160). One AIPAC staffer, for example, told journalist Michael Massing: We can count on well over half the House250 to 300 membersto do reexively whatever AIPAC wants (p. 10). Steven Rosen, a former AIPAC ofcial, placed a napkin in front of New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Goldberg that said: In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin (pp. 10 11). The pro-Israel lobby and the neoconservatives were allies in terms of propagandizing for the war. But they both needed the support of President Bush to achieve their objective. It seems that Wolfowitz initiated the campaign in the White House to win the presidents support for the war ve days after 9/11. From that point until the fall of 2002, Bush seemed to be adapting to those who claimed that toppling Saddam Hussein was a necessary strategy in the war on terrorism. Another strategy was to reassure the public that the war on Iraq agenda was the same as the presidents. For example, Mortimer Zuckerman, chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and an editor-in-chief at the mass weekly U.S. News & World Report, stated in August 2002: Those who predict dire results if we try to unseat Saddam simply refuse to understandas President Bush manifestly doesthat if we opt to live with a nightmare, it will only get worse. Much worse. The best medicine here, in other words, is preventive medicine (p. 241). But Israel also seems to have played a role in Bushs thinking. For example, in March and April 2002 the Israeli Defence Forces retook control of all Palestinian towns in the West Bank that they had evacuated between 1994 and 2000 under the terms of the Oslo accords, and justied this action as a legitimate response to the terrorism of a suicide bombing that killed 30 Israelis on Passover. Even though Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to link the reoccupation of towns that had been ceded to the Palestinian Authority as part of the global war on terrorism, Bushs response was to halt incursions and begin withdrawal (p. 208). After pressure from Israeli politicians, visits from Senate delegations and leaders of the American Christian Evangelical movement, Bush changed his position and, in effect, accepted the Israeli fait accompli. The international media registered Bushs volte-face as a humiliation. For example, Spains leading daily, El Pas, noted: If a countrys weight is measured by its degree of inuence on events, the superpower is not the USA but Israel (p. 211). By January 2003, Bush seemed to have made up his mind about Saddam Hussein. In his State of the Union Address at the end of that month, he said the characteristics of the Iraqi regimeevil and violencewere worse than ever. His claims are a stilted representation of a purely diabolical foe (war mechanism reactivated after September 11), and, as such, an illustration of argumentum ad hominem, and argumentum ad populum:
140
H. Koppang
The dictator who is assembling the worlds most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villagesleaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disgured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtainedby torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. Now, Saddam is a purely diabolical foe. Yet in the same speech Bush made several claims, without evidence, that might reect how the hidden agenda was stilted in the case of Iraq. The interesting combination of claims is that the dictator will not be allowed to dominate a region (Israeli interest in eliminating a regional rival) or to threaten the United States (despite a distance of 10,000 kilometers between Baghdad and Washington, DC): A brutal dictator . . . with ties to terrorism . . . will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States. On May 1, 2003, Bush thanked the ofcers and sailors of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln for the victory in Iraq and declared an end to major combat operations. By claiming to be seeking all the facts (but with no hard evidence), the president had convinced himself of the existence of WMD. Even in January 2004, the president was not willing to give up his belief in the presence of WMD in Iraq. This might indicate that he had been convinced that WMD were indeed a fact. If so, we have an example of a propagandist claiming as authentic what turned out to be mere allegation, and who does not admit defeat, even after receiving evidence that there were no WMD. But let us be candid about the consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power. Were seeking all the facts. Already, the Kay Report identied dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and signicant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictators weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day. (State of the Union Address, January 2004) Conclusion One might claim that Bushs speeches were not propaganda, but rather elements of persuasion. Propaganda, I think, is a useful concept for understanding manipulation as a key problem to social inuence, e.g., how the few control the many. However, for most Americans, after WW II and until 9/11, US domestic propaganda was disavowed. After 9/11, there was a change, and propaganda has been everywhere. Nevertheless, a collective mental block and a general disavowal of presidential propaganda may protect the White House from being seen as an irresponsible organ of patriotic propaganda. Many deepseated beliefs are activated by the ofce of the American president, not the least of which is that the president tells the truth and defends the constitution. One might argue that had it not been for gullible propagandees, and disavowal and unawareness of domestic and especially presidential propaganda accompanied by tailor-made theory conceptions and denitions after WWII, propagandees may have seen through Bushs propaganda. Broad
141
and narrow denitions of propaganda seem to be a sophisticated version of affection for some particular falsehood. An effective way of manipulating the many is by activating self-deceptive affection for some particular falsehood by, for example, well-designed claims, such as this government does not torture, axis of evil, Israel and US are in the same situation, or no act of America explains the terrorist violence. Furthermore, the Bush administration did not have a ready-made approach immediately after 9/11, but rather it took some time before the president was propagandized into the position that war in Iraq was a must. Neoconservatives, Israel-supporters, and Israeli politicians, however, for years had worked to eliminate Iraq as a regional rival. Right after 9/11 their hidden agenda was to gain US support for eliminating Iraq as one of Israels regional rivals. Those wanting an attack on Iraqas a rst step in a vision of transforming the Middle Easthad to sell the idea to the president. Wolfowitz, for example, so intensely agitated for war on Iraq that Vice President Cheney, himself a neoconservative, told him to keep quiet; one Republican lawmaker said Wolfowitz was like a parrot bringing [Iraq] up all the time (Mearsheimer & Walt, p. 246). If supporters of Israel had revealed their hidden agenda, public opinion may have responded that the issue was not an issue of US security. If the president, however, said that Iraq is a threat to US security because of its WMD, then public opinion tended to believe him. A central theme in Bushs speeches before the Congress is that we are winners and they are the losers. Propagandees are told that they either are with us or are with the terrorists and must act accordingly. Furthermore, by using the term crusade, the idea of God being on our side is implied.Propagandee action is determined by a kind of vocatio, where propagandees receive the call to defend freedomthat is to say, accepting freedom for the few to manipulate the many, rather than the right of the public to free choice. By applying fallacious arguments such as argumentum ad hominum, argumentum populum, and argumentum ad baculum, the president appeared to be transforming paralyzed victims into freedom ghters ready for action. However, because there was no evidence about WMD, there was the problem of how to deal with that lack. Argumentum ad ignorantiam and changing the burden of proof seemed to be a proof for WMD that worked psychologically, but not logicallyyou cannot prove a negative. Critical thoughts on biases in reasoning and information seem to have been circumvented effectively. For organizers behind the scenes, propaganda is an excellent form of mass communication that protects and promotes a hidden agenda. A few people inside the Bush administration and a few outsideall lacking any formal power to decide for war put forward the reasoning, qua propaganda, for going to war, without any evidence for a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, or any evidence for WMD in Iraq or a threat to the United States. In propaganda, conclusions are distinct and precise and premises opaque and deceptive, as were the premises and conclusions about WMD in Iraq. Typically, for an eristic dialogue there is no interest in critical discussion (attack-defense), no interest in getting knowledge (e.g., data from UN inspectors was overlooked or attacked), and no openness about ones own deceptive judgment position. Unlimited freedom to manipulate, though, undermines conditions for open dialogue; but that is the pointto prevent a disclosing dialogue about evidence and real premises. Bernays extended the freedoms of speech and press to the freedom to persuade, including the freedom to manipulate. After 9/11, President Bush, the people around him,
142
H. Koppang
and groups behind the scenes all have caused reasons for rehabilitating the term propaganda as a key term to uncover all means of manipulation, which dampen democracy and beguile individual reasoning and decision-making. Claiming, as does Bernays, that the gospel of propaganda is mass-mediated, democracys last, best hope, is, in my context, a contradictio in adiecto. Fundamental to our way of life is the belief that when information that properly belongs to the public systematically is withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, andeventuallyincapable of determining their own destinies.113 References
Allison, G. T. (1971) Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown). Bandura, A. (1999) Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities, in: Personality & Social Psychology Review, 3, pp. 193209. . (2004) The Role of Selective Moral Disengagement in Terrorism and Counterterrorism, in: Mogahaddam, F. M. & Marsella, A. J. (Eds) Understanding Terrorism: Psychological Roots, Consequences and Interventions, pp. 121150 (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press). . (2006) Mechanisms of moral disengagement in support of military force: The impact of Sept. 11, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25, pp. 141165. Bernays, E. L. (1928) Propaganda (New York: Liveright Publishing). Bovard, J. (2003) Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Dodge, R. (1920) The psychology of propaganda, Religious Education, 15, pp. 241 252. Doob, L. W. (1950) Goebbels Principles of Propaganda, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 14, pp. 419 442. Ehrlich, E. (1985) Nil Desperandum: A Dictionary of Latin Tags and Useful Phrases (London: Robert Hale). Eisman, A. (2003) The media of manipulation: patriotism and propagandamainstream news in the United States in the weeks following September 11, Critical Quarterly, 45, pp. 5572. Ekman, P. (1992) Telling Lies. Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). Ellul, J. (1973) Propaganda: The Formation of Mens Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books). . (1981) The ethics of propaganda: Propaganda, innocence, and amorality, Communication, 6, pp. 159 175. Entman, C. G. (2003) Cascading activation: Contesting the White Houses frame after 9/11, Political Communication, 20, pp. 415433. Ewen, S. (1996) PR: A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books). Geertz, C. (1964) Ideology as a cultural system, in: Apter, D. E. (Ed.) Ideology and Discontent, pp. 47 75 (New York: Free Press). Gitlin, T. (1980) The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmaking of the New Left (California: University of California Press). Habermas, J. (1981) The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press). Hall Jamieson, K. (2007) Justifying the war in Iraq: What the Bush Administrations uses of evidence reveal, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, pp. 249 274. Herman, E. S. & Chomsky, N. (1994) Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media (London: Vintage). Hiebert, R. E. (2003) Public relations and propaganda in framing the Iraq war: A preliminary review, Public Relations Review, 29, pp. 243 255. Hitler, A. (19251927) Mein Kampf, 2 Vols. (Munchen: Franz Eher Nachf). Israel, J. (1973) Sosiologi (Oslo: Gyldendal). Ivie, R. L. (2007) Fighting terror by rite of redemption and reconciliation, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, pp. 221 248.
113
Schiller, The Mind Managers, quoting Richard Nixon, p. 146.
143
Johnson-Cartee, K. & Copeland, G. A. (2004) Strategic Political Communication: Rethinking Social Inuence, Persuasion, and Propaganda (New York: Rowman & Littleeld). Jowett, G. & ODonnell, V. (1999) Propaganda and Persuasion (California: Sage). Karim, H. K. (2001) Cyber-utopia and the myth of paradise: Using Jaques Elluls work on propaganda to analyze information society rhetoric, Information, Communication and Society, 4, pp. 113134. Kimble, J. J. (2005) Whither propaganda? Agonism and the engineering of consent, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 91, pp. 201218. Lasswell, H. D. (1930) Psychopathology and Politics (New York: Viking Press). Lee, A. M. (1953) How to Understand Propaganda (New York: Rinehart & Company). Lumley, F. E. (1929) The nature of propaganda, Sociology and Research, 13, pp. 315324. Maier, C. T. (2000) Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mearsheimer, J. J. & Walt, S. M. (2007) The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Mele, A. R. (1987) Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-deception, and Self-control (New York: Oxford University Press). Miliband, R. (1973) The State in Capitalist Society (London: Quartet Books). Miller, C. R. (1937) How to detect propaganda, Propaganda Analysis, 1, pp. 5 7. Morrow, L. (2003) Evil: An Investigation (New York: Basic Books). Nozick, R. (1993) The Nature of Rationality (New Jersey: Princeton University Press). OShaughnessy, N. J. (2004) Politics and Propaganda. Weapons of Mass Seduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Payne, L. (2003) Available at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0309-01.htm (accessed March 30, 2009) Bible-Thumping War Drums. Pratkanis, A. R. & Turner, M. E. (1996) Persuasion and democracy: Strategies for increasing deliberative participation and enacting social change, Journal of Social Issues, 52, pp. 187205. Pratkanis, A. R. (1999) Propaganda, in: D. Levinson, J. Ponzetti & P. Jorgensen (Eds) Encyclopedia of Human Emotions, pp. 536539 (New York: Macmillan). Pratkanis, A. R. & Aronson, E. (2001) Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion (New York: W.H. Freeman). Qualter, T. H. (1985) Opinion Control in the Democracies (London: Macmillan). Rojecki, A. (2008) Rhetorical alchemy: American exceptionalism and the war on terror, Political Communication, 25, pp. 6788. Schiller, H. I. (1973) The Mind Managers (Boston: Beacon Press). Shanahan, J. (Ed.) (2001) Propaganda Without Propagandists? Six Case Studies in US Propaganda (New Jersey: Hampton Press). Sproule, J. M. (1987) Propaganda studies in American social science: The rise and fall of the critical paradigm, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73, pp. 6078. . (1997) Propaganda and Democracy: The American Experience of Media and Mass Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Strong, E. K. Jr. (1921) Control of propaganda as a psychological problem, The Scientic Monthly, 14, pp. 234252. Sue Lockett, J., et al. (2007) Going public, crisis after crisis: The Bush Administration and the press from September 11 to Saddam, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, pp. 195 220. Vidal, G. (2002) Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to be so Hated (New York: Thunders Mouth Press/Nation Books). Vivian, B. (2006) Neoliberal epideictic: Rhetorical form and commemorative politics on September 11, 2002, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 92, pp. 126. Walton, D. N. (1992) The Place of Emotion in Argument (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press). . (1997) What is propaganda, and what exactly is wrong with it? Public Affairs Quarterly, 11, pp. 383413. Zarefski, D. (2007) Making the case for war: Colin Powell at the United Nations, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 10, pp. 275302.

43429271

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

43429271

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Middle East Critique Vol. 18, No.

2, 117143, Summer 2009

Social Inuence by Manipulation: A Denition and Case of Propaganda

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Social Inuence by Manipulation

Schiller, The Mind Managers, quoting Richard Nixon, p. 146.

Social Inuence by Manipulation

You might also like