Encyclopedia of Propaganda Methods. Part 4
Rewriting History
This method is effective in the long term when there is a need to gradually shape a desired worldview. To “brainwash” an entire society, carry out a large-scale manipulation program, and disconnect the common sense of several generations, the first step is to destroy historical memory.
Modern techniques of mind manipulation can erase knowledge gained from real historical experience and replace it with knowledge artificially constructed by a “director.” This artificially created version of historical reality is transmitted to individuals through books, lectures, radio and television, the press, theater performances, movies, and so on. In this way, an illusory world is built, which is perceived as real. As a result, a person may see real life as an unpleasant dream, while the chimeras instilled by propaganda, advertising, and mass culture are perceived as reality, putting them in a trance-like state.
Cinema is especially effective in this regard. As a tool of propaganda, film can have an extremely strong emotional impact (see Emotional Resonance). It actively generates an illusory, highly idealized picture of the world in the viewer’s imagination. According to the director’s intent, a film can arbitrarily create a sense of “justice” and moral rightness for any character, regardless of their actual role in history. The propagandistic influence occurs covertly, on an emotional level, outside of conscious control. Rational counterarguments do not work in this case. For example, we all know who Adolf Hitler was and what he did. However, using special dramatic techniques and talented actors, a director can present things so that viewers’ sympathies end up on the side of the FĂĽhrer. His heinous crimes may seem not like crimes at all, but noble deeds—after all, the victims themselves are portrayed as villains deserving to be killed. People in the theater may sincerely weep as the “honest and noble” FĂĽhrer shoots himself in April 1945.
Manipulating the sense of “justice” of a character is actively used by Hollywood. Everyone has seen American action movies like “Rambo” and “Rambo II,” so they know that while America lost the Vietnam War in reality, it won it on the movie screen. The West has produced thousands of such films and flooded the world with them. Aside from the Soviet film “Solo Voyage” (1984), the Soviet Union (and later Russia) offered little in response.
At the same time, it is hard to overestimate the role that the expansion of Western mass culture, and Western cinema in particular, played in the collapse of the Soviet system. Whether intentionally or spontaneously, Western worldviews and standards of living were introduced into society. One of the reasons for the Soviet Union’s defeat in the Cold War was its loss on the level of mass culture. The Soviet propaganda machine failed to create an attractive virtual world that was spectacular, exciting, interesting to a mass audience, and at the same time “correctly” interpreted world history and promoted Soviet values and lifestyle. (A few masterpieces like “Kuban Cossacks” are exceptions that prove the rule.) The West, on the other hand, excelled at producing “tasty” illusions.
In the realm of mass culture, despite its extreme simplicity, the United States today enjoys unparalleled appeal, especially among young people worldwide. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, mass culture (along with military and economic power) gives the United States a level of political influence unmatched by any other country.
Food for thought: In 1994, a Hollywood studio shot the action film “Bullet to Beijing” starring Michael Caine. It was filmed in St. Petersburg, and the heroes fought against the Chechen mafia. When the film was nearly finished, the Chechen war began, and the world sympathized with Chechnya, so showing “bad Chechens” became politically unwise. The film was banned by American censors and shelved despite millions spent on production. This fact clearly demonstrates the importance of propaganda in the modern U.S. entertainment industry.
Notice: The “bad guys” in American action movies always match the current foreign policy agenda of the United States. In past decades, movie supermen like Rambo or James Bond mainly fought cunning Soviet spies and sadistic KGB colonels. In the 2002 film, Agent 007 is captured by North Koreans (modern representatives of the “axis of evil”) and subjected to brutal torture. This is a subtle and elegant propaganda technique using the Perspective Effect.
Another popular topic today is rewriting the history of World War II. After watching American blockbusters, you might finally “realize” that the backbone of Nazism was broken not at Stalingrad or Kursk, but during the rescue of Private Ryan. In films like “Stalingrad” (1994) and “Enemy at the Gates” (2001), you see noble and civilized Germans bravely fighting against Russian savages and, in general, coming out as winners at Stalingrad. The Germans, it turns out, were all anti-fascists, “just honestly doing their military duty.” British director Ken Loach once said, “It’s important that history is written by us, because whoever writes history controls the present.”
The result is obvious: the average Westerner’s knowledge of World War II is well illustrated by the following dialogue:
- Q: “Do you know how many Americans died in World War II?”
- A: “Oh, a lot. I’d say… fifty thousand, I think…”
- — And how many Russians?
- — Well, I don’t know… But certainly not as many as Americans.
- — Why do you think so?
- — Well, they only joined us at the very end of the war… Didn’t they? Not earlier? Oh, that’s something!
The success of Western propaganda in this area is so significant that it should concern the public in countries with “non-Western” cultures. For example, when asked who first created a nuclear power plant, a nuclear icebreaker, an artificial satellite, the most powerful rocket, hydrofoil and hovercraft ships, sent a man into space, or won the decisive victory in World War II, a significant portion of Russian (!) youth name… the United States. (Perhaps this is not surprising after the Hollywood blockbuster “Armageddon” (1999) was a big hit in Russia, where the Russian cosmonaut is portrayed as a complete fool, wandering around the space station in a fur hat and fixing computers with a sledgehammer.) The list of such pseudo-achievements of the West could go on endlessly. Meanwhile, some of their real achievements are not publicized in the West. For example, the invention of the atomic bomb and its use on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (By the way, today 30% of young Japanese sincerely believe that these cities and their populations were destroyed by Russians dropping atomic bombs, while Americans heroically rescued the victims.)
It should be noted that in recent years, some steps have been taken in Russia in this direction. Primarily, they are aimed at forming favorable public opinion regarding the government’s actions in resolving the Chechen conflict, actively using mass culture. For example, numerous TV series about special forces and police, commissioned by Russian special propaganda agencies, depict “our guys”—simple and just—bravely fighting in Chechnya “for us.” The general direction of “manipulating justice” in this case is characterized by a quote from the film “War” (2002, dir. Alexei Balabanov):
— How much does it cost to buy? (a hostage for ransom)
— There’s a market in Chechnya: you buy one thing, but order something else…
— What do you mean, order?
— Well, like ordering a hit. You act like you’re from the moon…
— But that’s bandits…
— And Chechens are bandits!
— All of them?
— Yes, all of them! (and so on)
The top-charting songs of the Russian band “Lyube” (“Batya Combat,” “Let’s Drink For…,” etc.) are in the same vein.
Perspective
When covering a conflict, “independent” media often give the floor to only one side, effectively taking their side and creating a one-sided perspective. This technique is especially used in war reporting.
For example, during the Yugoslav conflict in 1998, 80% of Western media reports had a negative context regarding the Yugoslav or Serbian side, while negative coverage of ethnic Albanians was almost nonexistent. According to Western news agencies, violence in 95% of cases was committed by Serbs or their leaders (S. Milosevic and company). In February 2000, Major T. Collins of the U.S. Army’s information service admitted that CNN—the “stronghold of world democracy and freedom of speech”—actively used and paid PR specialists from the U.S. Army during the war: “They helped produce the right information about Kosovo.”
Another NATO official admitted: “When we know the Serbs did it, we say the Serbs did it. When we don’t know who did it, we say the Serbs did it. And when we know the Serbs didn’t do it, we say we don’t know who did it.” (Pittsburg Post Gazette, November 7, 1999).
To justify the war, NATO used scientific methods of information manipulation. Scientific articles were published in the West on the technology of “demonizing Serbs.” The main conclusion: if you continuously and for a long time place the word “Serb” in a negative context (simply include it in descriptions of terrible events and surround it with unpleasant epithets), viewers, regardless of their position, develop a persistent dislike for Serbs. Also, of course, Serbs should not be given access to the camera. Similarly, Western propaganda demonizes figures like S. Hussein, M. Gaddafi, F. Castro, and other “bad” political leaders.
Russian government media covered events in Chechnya in a similar way.
Repetition
“The masses call information true if it is most familiar,” wrote Joseph Goebbels. “Ordinary people are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Therefore, propaganda must always be simple and endlessly repetitive. Ultimately, the greatest influence on public opinion will be achieved by those who can reduce problems to the simplest words and expressions and have the courage to constantly repeat them in this simplified form, despite objections from intellectuals.”
One of the most effective propaganda methods is the relentless repetition of the same statements so that people get used to them and accept them not with reason, but on faith. People always find convincing what they remember, even if the memory comes from purely mechanical repetition of a commercial or a catchy jingle. The goal is to influence not the opponent’s ideas and theories, but the everyday consciousness, the “small” thoughts, desires, and actions of the average person. The philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote: “It’s not the statement of some truth that would revolutionize consciousness. It’s the huge number of books, magazines, brochures, newspaper articles, conversations, and debates that are endlessly repeated and, in their gigantic totality, create the extra effort from which collective will is born, necessary for action.”
Psychologists have conducted many studies to determine the characteristics of repeated messages that ensure memorization. They found a critical time value: a complete message should fit within 4 to 10 seconds, and individual parts within 0.2 to 0.5 seconds. To perceive a message longer than 8-10 seconds, a person must make an effort, and few are willing to do so. Such messages are simply discarded by memory. Therefore, skilled TV editors simplify texts, often removing logic and coherence, replacing them with associations and wordplay.
Repetition is the main tool of dishonest propaganda. Therefore, it is a good sign of its presence. If the same topic and phrases are repeated daily, something is up.
For example, every year during harvest time, the press laments high diesel taxes; there are periodic campaigns against lifting monopolist privileges or banning alcohol and tobacco ads; before elections, all government media suddenly praise some politicians and criticize others, and so on. This is deliberate suggestion, as there are usually no reasonable arguments—just a shadow order paid for with a certain number of bills featuring foreign presidents.
Substitution
Substitution is a form of the notorious “double standards.” It involves using favorable definitions (euphemisms) for unfavorable actions and vice versa. The main goal is to create a positive image for violent actions. For example, riots are called “protest demonstrations,” gangs are “freedom fighters,” and mercenaries are “volunteers.”
Nazi propagandists excelled at this. To soften the perception of looting, torture, murder, and genocide as state policy, the Nazis used many euphemisms. For example, the Gestapo did not arrest citizens but “subjected them to preliminary detention.” The SS did not rob murdered Jews’ property but “took it under reliable protection.” The invasion of Poland in 1939 was a “police action,” and the subsequent killing of its citizens was an “extraordinary pacification action.” Buildings in concentration camps had cheerful names like “Happy Nightingale” or “Paradise Corner.” Prisoners were never gassed or killed; they were simply brought to the “final solution” or given “special treatment.”
Today, Western propaganda uses the same techniques. In covering “anti-terrorist operations” and “peacekeeping actions,” terms like “protective reaction,” “limited airstrike,” “moral duty of the U.S.,” and “united forces of democracy program” are used. Subversive organizations created by Western intelligence to overthrow unwanted regimes get nice names like “National Endowment for Democracy,” “International Democratic Forum,” “Open Society Institute,” “Freedom House,” and so on. When Americans or Jews are killed in the Middle East, it’s terrorism; when Russian soldiers are killed in Chechnya, it’s a struggle for independence and the right to self-determination.
In general, verbal substitution is used very widely. If you bomb military targets in another country… no, you’re not an aggressor, you’re a peacekeeper. We catch spies, they catch our intelligence officers. When our special services eliminate state criminals, it’s forced self-defense; when theirs do, it’s dirty political murder. When natives fight against us, they’re “bandits”; when they fight on our side, they’re “mujahideen.” The list goes on.
The second Chechen war in Russia led to a whole host of verbal substitutions designed to “properly” describe the situation: “This is not a war, but an anti-terrorist operation…,” “Territory is being cleared…,” “Federal troops occupied, federals advanced…” G. Pocheptsov gives an interesting example with the use/non-use of the word “border” regarding Chechnya. Since crossing a border implies aggression, the word quickly disappeared from Russian media vocabulary.
Half-Truth
The historical writings of Marquis Astolphe de Custine warped the minds of more than one Russian “freethinker” in the 18th-19th centuries. The Marquis showed that the core of propaganda warfare is lies. For example, describing poor sanitary conditions and wild customs in Russia, he “forgot” that at the same time, every respectable French home, including the royal palace, had a special plate on the card table for crushing lice that periodically ran out of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s luxurious clothes.
The half-truth method was actively used during the collapse of the USSR. In the late 1980s, centrifugal tendencies arose in the Soviet republics. To strengthen them, republican elites seeking power and independence from Moscow actively created an enemy image. The idea was spread: Russia is robbing us. Estonians were convinced they were feeding the entire USSR. The same idea was popular in Ukraine, where people loved to count how many regions “worked” to supply Moscow with food. Similar myths were developed in Central Asian and Caucasian republics. They were used to form and manage national movements that swept most Soviet republics in the early 1990s. Indeed, the republics gave most of their gross product to the union. This fact was used to stir up discontent with the Union and Moscow. But it was “forgotten” that the republics received nickel, tin, cadmium, oil, gas, and other resources from the center, necessary for their economies. This is a classic example of half-truth.
Today, many in Russia are annoyed by how quickly former “brothers in the socialist camp” from Eastern Europe ran to NATO. Psychologically, this is easy to explain. The memory of vassal dependence on the USSR and the ideological dictate of the “big brother” is still fresh among the Balts, Poles, Bulgarians, and others—so they want to get under Uncle Sam’s nuclear umbrella as soon as possible. However, no one in these countries mentions that in return, they received free weapons, ultra-cheap energy, and a huge market for their goods. “Brotherly friendship” with the Soviet Union is only remembered negatively. One could almost feel sorry for the former satellites for such one-sided memory—now, instead of orders from Moscow, they have to fulfill any whim and sexual fancy of Washington, buy expensive NATO weapons with their own money, and feed a huge army of NATO officials and generals (for example, President Bush’s visit to Lithuania in late 2002 cost $600,000—hosting “senior comrades” from Moscow was much cheaper).
The half-truth method is used not only in big politics. Authorities actively use it, for example, when raising utility prices, trying to convince us that we must pay for electricity, gas, and water at world rates—like in America or Europe. But they delicately omit that incomes should also be raised to European levels.
Contrast Principle
White stands out against a black background, and vice versa. Psychologists always emphasize the role of the social background against which a person or group is perceived. A loafer among working people is judged more harshly. Against a backdrop of evil and unjust people, a good person is always seen with special sympathy.
The contrast principle is used when, for some reason, you can’t say something directly (censorship, risk of a lawsuit for slander), but you really want to. In this case, the audience is led to the desired conclusion.
For example, all media widely use special arrangements of news topics, leading the audience to clear conclusions. This is especially noticeable during election campaigns. All internal conflicts and scandals in the camp of political opponents are covered in detail, with all the juicy details. The message: “they’re all demagogues and troublemakers.” In contrast, “our” political movement is presented as a united team of like-minded professionals engaged in real constructive work. News stories are selected accordingly. The “bad guys” fight over party list spots, while the “good guys” open a children’s hospital at their own expense, help the disabled and single mothers, and so on. The setup is such that while some politicians fight for power and argue, others work for the good of the people.
Some media present certain electoral blocs in a better light, others do the opposite. By the bias of journalists, you can easily guess which financial-political group controls a given media outlet.
Trial Balloons
Political and military propaganda campaigns are always carefully prepared by experts in psychology, advertising, and marketing, and are usually paid for by PR agencies hired by clients. Through preliminary surveys and other research, specialists study the conscious and unconscious reactions of the public to develop the most effective tactics. Often, a kind of “practical test” of a range of propaganda topics is conducted to identify the most “successful” ones. For this, a certain number of “sensational messages” are released into the media market. Those that do not get a public response are dropped. The most successful are then heavily promoted by controlled media (see Creating an Information Wave).
During the war in Yugoslavia, NATO’s propaganda campaign was preceded by trial balloons. For Kosovo, these included refugee flows, murders (which did occur, but on a much smaller scale than NATO claimed), and others. The Serbs were accused of terrible crimes: “concentration camps,” “human shields,” “mass rapes,” and so on.
For example, on March 30, 1999, Serbs were accused of herding Albanians into a soccer stadium in Pristina (25,000 seats) to execute them. The accusation was symbolic, deliberately evoking memories of Pinochet’s crimes. The next day, reporters went to the stadium: it was completely empty. Western media never mentioned it again. There was no retraction either. On April 7, 1999, Agence France-Presse accused Yugoslavia of creating “human shields” from Albanians: “The fate of thousands of Kosovars whom Belgrade does not allow to leave Kosovo worries the world community…” This topic was dropped, as it was later claimed that “Belgrade is expelling Albanians from their lands.” On August 2, 1999, B. Kouchner (head of the UN mission in Kosovo) loudly announced that 11,000 bodies—victims of ethnic cleansing—had been found. The next day, he casually stated that “the facts were not confirmed.” Constant reports of “horrific crimes” fueled Western public opinion in favor of NATO aggression. Some stories got wide coverage, others went unnoticed. If Western media were later forced to retract false reports, they did so in a few words printed in small type on the back pages.
Psychological Shock
Psychological shock is a type of Emotional Resonance taken to the extreme. Today, the media bring images of death into every home in huge quantities. We constantly see close-ups of dead people—so close that their relatives can’t help but recognize them. We see half-burned bodies of disaster and terror victims. We see footage of shelves lined with skulls. Leaving aside the moral aspects of turning corpses into TV props, often this is done to use shock to instill purely political ideas. Psychological shock usually disables all psychological defenses, and propaganda nonsense penetrates our brains unhindered.
Studies have shown that video footage showing, for example, the aftermath of war, has a powerful subconscious impact and turns public opinion against the side responsible for the destruction (regardless of whether the war’s goals are just). Therefore, when covering “peacekeeping operations,” Western media always strictly control the display of destruction and death.
Russian media widely used psychological shock when covering events in Chechnya. In 1996, many TV channels (especially NTV) showed a lot of footage of explosions, destruction, and death—to instill the idea that the war was pointless. In 1999-2000, the goals became the opposite. Blown-up houses, beheaded Russian soldiers and Western journalists were shown to prove that Chechen militants were monsters, so “clearing the territory” was necessary.
Rating
This is a type of the previously discussed “Statement of Fact” technique. Psychologists have long established that publishing the results of sociological research influences public opinion. From 10 to 25% of voters, when choosing candidates, are guided by sociological ratings. Many people want to vote for the strong, but few for the weak. This is due to a psychological phenomenon common to the average person—the desire to be “like everyone else.” Therefore, announcing a higher rating for a candidate before the election can actually increase the number of votes for them.
Because of this, many polling firms during election campaigns become like practitioners of the oldest profession and start working on the “any whim for your money” principle. By “appointing” a leader in the ratings, they partly create that leader.
In the media, pseudo-ratings are usually presented with a scientific veneer: “The poll was conducted in all regions of our country. The sample size was 3,562 people. All social categories and age groups were considered. The margin of error does not exceed 1.5%,” and so on. Smart words and scientific terms are meant to hypnotize the average person.
Sensationalism or Urgency
This is a general technique that ensures the necessary level of nervousness and undermines psychological defenses. This nervousness, the sense of constant crisis, greatly increases people’s suggestibility and reduces their ability to think critically. Any manipulation succeeds when it outpaces the audience’s psychological defenses, when it manages to impose its tempo on our consciousness. That’s why almost all news blocks in the media today begin with so-called “sensational messages”: serial murders, plane crashes, terrorist acts, scandals in the lives of politicians or showbiz stars.
In reality, the urgency of the news is almost always false, artificially created. Sometimes sensationalism serves as a distraction. Usually, such a “sensation” is trivial—an elephant gave birth at the zoo, a bus collided with a truck in a tunnel, a teenager raped and killed his grandmother. The next day, everyone forgets about it.
Herbert Schiller writes: “Just as advertising prevents concentration and deprives interrupted information of weight, the new information processing technique allows the airwaves to be filled with streams of useless messages, making the individual’s already hopeless search for meaning even more difficult.”
Under the cover of a sensation, you can either hide an important event the public shouldn’t know about or end a scandal that needs to be forgotten. Therefore, sensationalism is closely linked to the “Distraction” technique.
Shifting Emphasis
This is used, for example, when reporting the latest news. The essence of the technique is well explained by an American joke from the Cold War era: The American president and the Soviet general secretary took part in a long-distance race. The general secretary won. American commentators reported: “Our president came in second, and the general secretary came in next to last.” Formally, everything is correct, but listeners are misled.
Another joke, a sad one. Newspaper report: “Well-armed with fists, Palestinians attacked Israeli soldiers peacefully sitting in tanks. The soldiers suffered severe moral trauma. The Palestinians got off with light deaths.”
This technique is often used by leading global news agencies.
Creating Associations
An object is artificially linked in the public mind to something perceived as very bad (or, conversely, very good). Metaphors are widely used for this purpose.
- “Stalin is Lenin today”—Soviet propaganda;
- “S. Hussein is the Arabic-speaking Hitler”—American propaganda;
- “NATO is fascism”—Yugoslav propaganda.
Metaphors, including associative thinking, save a lot of intellectual effort. This is where another propaganda trap lies. The temptation to save mental effort makes people, instead of studying and understanding the essence of problems, resort to associations and false analogies: calling things by a metaphor that refers them to other, already familiar situations. Often, the confidence that those other situations are known or understood is itself illusory. For example, a Russian patriot says: the current Putin regime is like the times of Peter the Great. He is sure he knows what Peter’s times were like, and this may be his first mistake—and the first condition for the success of this manipulation.
A poetic metaphor creates a vivid image in the imagination. It has a magical effect and can block common sense for a long time. It’s very hard to convince people whose minds have been filled with a simple and attractive false metaphor. Logic won’t work; you need a counter-metaphor.
Sometimes verbal metaphors are replaced by corresponding visuals. For example, manipulating the images of political opponents—TV reports about them are accompanied by footage of Nazis, Hitler, skulls, etc.
To create the desired associations, metaphors are not always necessary. There are other factors of associative linkage. For example, in the former USSR during “perestroika,” the economic factor played this role: political demands in propaganda messages were linked to the standard of living. In a simplified form, the lack of goods in stores became one of the main justifications for the “need for democracy.”
Today, in the post-Soviet space, it’s common to link the name of a political opponent to the people’s hardships. Before elections, you often see examples in the media. Interestingly, attacks on a particular figure appear in different media, but with identical phrases: “As head of government, Vasily Pupkin initiated price hikes for utilities (bread, medicine, transportation, etc.). He is responsible for the bankruptcy of the country’s largest bank, which cost millions of depositors their savings. He also recently met with the notorious terrorist NN, publicly hugged him, and shook his hand…” In short, the villain tramples on freedom, drinks the people’s blood, robs the poor, encourages injustice, lies, and so on. The identical text published in different sources is sometimes astonishing. The negative association that manages to link the opponent in the public mind (fascist, Stalinist, bribe-taker, mafioso, etc.) turns all the undecided away from them.
Usually, negative association campaigns start simultaneously in several media and end just as quickly. This synchronicity clearly shows the “freedom” of the press and television and is a reliable sign of a propaganda operation.
Many advertising and propaganda messages today are based on associations. The main types of these techniques were defined by William James: association by combination (showing a banana and a child in the same ad), association by surprise, typical of surrealism (the cut liver of the Venus de Milo sinking into Vichy mineral water), association by contiguity (a text made up of notes connected only by being printed next to each other on the same page), association by sound similarity (used by advertisers in slogans and trademarks), and many others.