Randal Marlin

by Propaganda

  ness. Religious beliefs may postpone happiness to another life aft er death, but happi-

  ness is still the ultimate goal. For example, an Arabic language document, some pages

  of which were reportedly found in a suitcase of a September 11 hijacker, Mohamed

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  Atta, advised hijackers: “You’re doing a job which is loved by God, and you will end your day in heavens where you will join the virgins.”2The word “happiness” may

  suggest a state of blissed-out withdrawal from the world or a total immersion in a

  sensual Valhalla, neither of which everybody wants. Some people are happy bearing

  the burdens of life, taking care of others regardless of their own desires, knowing that

  they are at least bringing happiness in some sense to these others. People tend to be

  concerned in a general way about better living conditions. For example, they do not

  want the environment destroyed or to find traffic at a standstill on their way to work.

  The propagandist will argue or suggest that whatever it is he or she is pushing will

  prevent destruction of the environment, help to reduce traffic congestion, or what-

  ever else relates to the special concerns of the audience. The formula is simple, and

  the complexity comes only in knowing, first, what it is that a given audience holds

  near and dear to their hearts and, secondly, how to convince them that the persons or

  policies presented for their vote will succeed in bringing about their wish.

  Knowing the mind of an audience comes in modern times largely through opin-

  ion polls. Money gives a great advantage to a modern propagandist, since polls are

  not cheap. Even so, polls have their limitations, and people can change their minds.

  But, assuming that the pre-existing beliefs and attitudes of an audience are known, the

  problem becomes one of convincing people that the program, measure, person, politi-

  cal party, commercial object, or whatever the propagandist is pushing is desirable. This

  is where a great number of different methods and considerations come into play.

  Attention

  Whether we deal with legitimate persuasion or ethically dubious propaganda, the

  first problem has always been to secure the attention of an audience. Merely putting

  something in someone’s field of vision does not ensure getting their attention. We tend

  to filter out of our perceptive field what does not interest us. If it does not pertain to

  our interests, we are likely to ignore it, unless it suddenly barks or screams or hits us

  over the head. It is interesting how advertisements on some Internet provider pages

  are sometimes so jumbled that we don’t notice them until they start to move; then we

  find our attention drawn to them, even against our will. Since those who wish to get

  our attention for propaganda purposes want to secure our compliance, they will not

  be well-advised to use irritating means. Much ingenuity has been exercised in the past

  to find an acceptable way of gaining and holding people’s attention. George Orwell,

  when he was only 11, once stood on his head near a fence bordering a neighbour’s

  garden where three children were playing cricket. One of them asked, politely but

  with curiosity, why he was standing on his head. The young Orwell replied, “You are

  noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up.”3 Orwell knew

  something about gaining attention, which is to present novelty. We may recall that the

  rise to power of the Nazis in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s was assisted by

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  Goebbels’s clever, attention-getting posters, such as one in blood-red ink announcing that “The Kaiser of America Speaks in Berlin,”4 and through the use of violence. It

  seems an unfortunate truth that the unscrupulous have an easier time getting press

  coverage.

  However, attention is affected by more than just the unusual. Pictures of scantily

  clad, beautiful women and men are hardly unusual today, yet they are still eye-catch-

  ing. We notice things that already preoccupy us in some way or other. Our own name

  will jump out at us from a list. Our professional concerns will cause our attention to

  fasten on key words related to our work as we scan a newspaper. Skillful advertising

  depends partly on knowing what kinds of things will capture the attention of the

  relevant market audience without causing offence in doing so.

  Totalitarian states exact the attention of people by force. In a free society, the

  right of a person to choose what messages to see and hear will place limits on the right

  of others to communicate with him or her. In democratic states today, attention is

  often sought by producing good visuals for television. People of the Cree First Nation

  brought war canoes to Central Park in New York, successfully getting press attention

  for their cause of opposition to further Hydro-Quebec damming of their lands. More

  recently, anti-tobacco campaigners dressed up in costumes to look like cigarettes, in

  imitation of the cartoon character drawn by Doonesbury. Such public relations gim-

  micks are risky, because the desire of the media for good pictures is counterbalanced

  by their resentment against being used. In the “Who is using whom?” assessment, it

  is hard to predict the outcome. Either way, familiarity could breed unconcern. Fresh

  stratagems need to be thought up from time to time. Even a sympathetic editor is

  likely to recoil from repeat performances.

  Emotional Appeals

  In a general way, propaganda and persuasion rely to a large extent on emotional levers.

  Wartime propaganda fuels hatred and anger against an enemy by turning the enemy

  into a non-human creature, unworthy of rights or respect in the eyes of propagandees.

  Or it appeals to fear of the consequence of inaction. Recruitment propaganda often

  appeals to the sense of belonging, to the fear of being left out and not counting as a

  somebody in one’s peer group. Beer and tobacco commercials stress the sense of group

  membership, of acceptance in fun-loving crowds when drinking or smoking.

  There are many different kinds of emotional appeals, all linked to reigning

  ideas of what is thought right or admirable at a given time. Emulation, greed, envy,

  and the like are sometimes stimulated by messages and signs that invite the reader,

  viewer, or hearer to be like some successful person portrayed in them: “You, too,

  can be thin, healthy, if ...”; “You, too, can be a responsible parent, if ...”; “You want

  to have beautiful skin? Here’s how....” Of course, there may be rational grounds for

  linking a given product with some featured admirable quality, but typically the

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  emotional appeal works independently. Perhaps the deepest anxiety in all of us relates to death and the afterlife, and it is not surprising that religions offering pal-liation of such anxieties can also convince people to part with a large part of their

  possessions to support their ministries. If the religion is too successful in answering

  these anxieties, a hell-fire sermon m
ay be useful for restoring them. A religion that

  confronts and answers our deepest anxieties is at least doing the job asked of it. In

  modern times, we see language or music previously reserved for the holy and sacred

  applied to mundane products pushed by the advertiser. The success of this seemingly

  contradictory effort remains to be seen.

  One use of emotion is to distract people from evaluating evidence. There is an

  old joke about advice given to a novice trial lawyer: “If the law is on your side, pound

  it into the judge. If the facts are on your side, pound it into the jury. If neither the law

  nor the facts are on your side, pound it into the table.” It helps, in a lawsuit for dam-

  ages, if the victim appears before the court bandaged up and looking to be in a piti-

  able state. If a newspaper supports a politician, it publishes pleasant pictures, perhaps

  showing the politician surrounded by smiling children. If it chooses to undermine a

  politician, it prints pictures showing an unsmiling face surrounded by angry people.

  In the course of an election campaign, many different expressions and scenes can be

  captured, so an editor can exercise a considerable power of selection.

  Credibility

  As indicated, emotion can sometimes distract an audience from raising questions

  about the authority and believability of a given message or spokesperson, but moods

  change from day to day, and a more concrete grounding for belief-acceptance may

  be needed over time. Repetition can help, but some further anchor is usually

  needed. The best anchor is reason, but not everyone can follow and appreciate the

  intricate arguments surrounding, say, risks from mishaps in a nuclear reactor. Since

  the public cannot always follow the arguments, it looks instead to the credentials of

  the person or group making them. This leads to what is perhaps the most important

  concern of propagandists, public relations consultants, and the like—namely, how

  to impart credibility.

  In modern times, the credibility of honest science is very high. That is why a lot

  of money is spent on studies to show scientifically whatever it is that the persuader

  wishes the public to believe. But the public can be deceived in three ways. First, the

  scientists themselves may be corrupted, ignoring those things that count against the

  wishes of the funding group and reporting only those things that tend to support

  them. Secondly, the scientists may be perfectly honest, but the public may come to

  believe that the results have an authority they do not in fact have. For example, in 1995,

  the Canadian gold-mining company, Bre-X, had its Indonesian ore samples analyzed

  by a prestigious, reputable firm, which found a very high concentration of gold in

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  them. The analyzing company noted that the samples were supplied by Bre-X, but this fact received insufficient attention. Later, it was revealed that the samples were “salted”

  (i.e., had gold artificially added to them to make them appear richer than they were).

  The stock of Bre-X soared, only to drop precipitously when the worthlessness of the

  unsalted samples came to light. Thirdly, advertisements can give merely through the

  use of imagery the impression that those with relevant scientific knowledge approve

  or endorse a product. For decades the tobacco industry would show images of doctors

  smoking, conveying the idea that if medical practitioners smoke, the practice (at least

  with regard to the portrayed brand of cigarette) is unlikely to be harmful.

  In a general way, a major goal of the propagandist is to seek some kind of authori-

  tative backing for the belief he or she is propagating. Different devices (to be looked

  at later) can be used to achieve that aim.

  Analogy and Scope

  The propagandist bent on promoting some object seeks in general to link the project,

  person, ideology, party, or whatever to some thing or things that are viewed favourably

  and not to some thing or things that are viewed unfavourably. Words and pictures are

  both well-suited for this activity. Certain favourable buzzwords are applied to features

  of the relevant project, etc., or unfavourable buzzwords get applied to things the propa-

  gandist wants the public to reject. Cultural icons are readily exploitable for propaganda

  purposes. Of course, icons can be toppled, and words can lose their buzz over time.

  Different words have different breadths of meaning, and these differences can be

  exploited for persuasive purposes. A heinous action may be made to appear innocent

  by choosing a word or expression that is applicable but that has broader connotations.

  “I merely told the truth about X’s past,” may disguise the simple fact that the destruc-

  tion of X’s reputation was involved. Where there is a blameless accidental killing, as

  in the case of some car accidents, the blamelessness can be disguised, sometimes inten-

  tionally, by the deliberate omission of the qualifier “accidentally.”

  Morally Evaluative Language

  Words can also be used to convey a moral attitude or a whole moral framework, which

  will affect the understanding or appreciation of a given idea, activity, person, group,

  etc. Whether we view a protest action as striking a blow for justice, as distinct from

  engaging in a despicable, cowardly terrorist act that maims innocent victims, will

  depend not only on the individual facts of the episode (the maimings might have

  been accidental) but also on one’s overall moral assessment of the justification for the

  protest and of the risk involved. The events of September 11, 2001 have rightly been

  condemned in world opinion, but it serves neither clarity of thinking nor future world

  peace to treat them as if they had no direct or indirect connection with previous US

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  “Soldiers All,” Punch, March 10, 1915.

  military actions in the Middle East and with innocent victims of this involvement. It

  tends to be a feature of warlike situations that opponents’ actions are viewed in the

  blackest possible light, with morally loaded language reflecting that interpretation,

  while one’s own or one’s al ies’ actions are treated in the most favourable light.

  Framing

  Walter Lippmann observed many years ago how stereotypes affect our vision of the

  world and how they can result in a coded view affecting ethical judgments.5 In war-

  time, the soldier operates under a patriotic code and is prepared to sacrifice his life for

  his country. For this, a grateful nation is supposed to hold him or her in high esteem

  for their courage and valour. The idea of striking for higher pay would be quite out of

  place within this frame.

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  By contrast, the munitions manufacturer is allowed to make a fortune produc-

  ing war material because the patriotic code is not in place for this. Instead, the capi-

  talist code of freedom operates to justify wartime profits. One might ask why, if a

  war is so necessary to a n
ation’s well-being, the producers of weaponry should not

  also make sacrifices, such as operating at cost instead of profiting? Given the bias

  in the mass media towards the wealthy, this frame switching never seems to get

  much of a hearing. But the framing of the munitions worker in terms related to the

  patriotic code was explicitly used by Punch, the British humour magazine, to counteract a move by workers to strike for higher pay in World War I. A cartoon shows

  a wounded army officer in uniform confronting a worried striking worker, asking

  him what he would think of a soldier who struck for higher pay in the middle of an

  action.6

  A large part of the battle to persuade involves, whether people are conscious of

  this or not, the establishment of the frame within which a given issue is posed. In the

  battle to gain acceptance of a bill to prohibit tobacco advertising in the late 1980s in

  Canada, those in favour of the bill came to realize that as long as the issue was framed

  in terms of freedom of speech, the tobacco industry would win. But if the discus-

  sion were framed in terms of health, the supporters of the bill would win. The groups

  favouring the bill succeeded in this aim, and the bill was passed.

  George Lakoff, a University of California linguist and cognitive scientist, has

  related the matter of framing to the way in which the brain is structured and how neu-

  ral paths are tied together in ways that we are not conscious of.7 Metaphors resonate

  with other metaphors and can bring into play a whole moral universe. For example,

  the idea of the family is deeply embedded in our life experience, but how it affects

  our moral outlook will vary depending on the kind of experiences the family brings

  to mind. Metaphors of the father when applied to the state (the fatherland, founding

  fathers, etc.) tend to bring to mind ideas of authority, strict discipline, and punish-

  ment. Maternal metaphors, on the other hand, tend to make people think in terms

  of nurturing and co-operation. It can become of vital importance for progressives

  not to buy into those metaphors that favour neo-conservative values but to replace

  them with others that favour a more progressive politics. It is a key contention of

  Lakoff ’s that our culture has been over-concerned with rationality when so much of