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Propaganda: Nobody Does It

Better Than America.
Paul Weber

Over the years, I have had the privilege of meeting and having
discussions with people who came to America from countries
known for their adherence to totalitarianism: China, Russia, and
former east European satellites of the Soviet Union. When we
discussed how the state managed to control public opinion under
totalitarianism, these people would usually produce a weary,
Volume I knowledgeable, cynical smile and point out that propaganda in
Issue 21 those countries was really done quite incompetently. If you really
want to know propaganda, they said, you need to study American
propaganda technique. According to them, it is, undeniably, the best
The Texas in the world.
Mercury's
Homepage "How can that be?" I asked, honestly puzzled.

Propaganda in those countries was too obvious, they told me. As

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soon as you read the first sentence you knew it was a bunch of
This Issue:
propaganda, so you didn’t even bother to read it. If you heard a
speech, you knew in the first few words that it was propaganda, and
Propaganda:
you tuned it out.
Nobody Does It
Better Than "But," I then queried, "How do you know when it’s just
America propaganda?"
By Paul Weber
The expatriates explained that bad propaganda uses obvious
St. Petersburg Idyll: terminology that anyone can see through. Anyone hearing the
Russia phrase "capitalist running dogs", knows he’s listening to
in Winter incompetent propaganda and tunes it out. Lousy propaganda, these
By Dave Francis knowledgeable but jaded individuals would tell me, appeals to an
abstract theory, to a rational thesis that can be disproved. Even
Peter Jackson's though communists had total control of the press, the people just
Fellowship of the tuned it out (except for those who were the most mentally
Ring: Perfect defective). Most people, they assured me, just went about their lives
By Kyle Lohmeier as best they could, paid lip service to the state, and just tried to
keep out of the way of the secret police. But hardly anyone really
Racial Profiling: Say believed the stuff. The result, after many decades of suffering, was
Hi to Your the eventual collapse of the old order once The Great Leader
Big Brother expired, whether his name was Brezhnev, Mao, or Tito.
By Jeremiah Mykytuk
American propaganda, however, is much cleverer. American

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Left Media Critics & propaganda, they patiently explained, relies entirely on emotional
Fools–But I Repeat appeals. It doesn’t depend on a rational theory that can be
Myself disproved: it appeals to things no one can object to.
By James Versluys
American propaganda had its birth, so far as I can tell, in the
Error & advertising industry. The pioneers of advertising—a truly loathsome
Tragedy bunch—learned early on that people would respond to purely
By Derek Copold emotional appeals. Abstract theory and logical argument do nothing
to spur sales. However, appeals to sexiness, to pride of ownership,
A Word from to fear of falling behind the neighbors are the stock in trade of
the Ungodly advertising executives. A man walking down the street with
By Hank Parnell beautiful women hanging on his arms is not a logical argument, but
it sure sells after-shave. A woman in a business suit with a
The Day briefcase, strolling along with swaying hips, assuring us she can
MLK Died "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, but never let you forget
By Bob Weir you’re a man" really sells the perfume.

Let’s take a moment and analyze the particular emotions that this
execrable ad appealed to. If you guessed fear, you win the prize.
Women often have a fear of inadequacy, particularly in this
confused age when they are expected to raise brilliant kids, run a
successful business, and be unfailingly sexy, all the time. That silly
goal—foisted upon us by feminists and popular culture—is
impossible to reach. But maybe there’s hope if you buy the right
perfume! Arguments from intimidation and appeals to fear are
powerful propaganda tools.

American advertising and propaganda has been refined over the

years into a malevolent science, based on the assumption that most
people react, not to ideas, but to naked emotion. When I worked at
an ad agency many years ago, I learned that the successful
agencies know how to appeal to emotions: the stronger and baser,
the better. The seven deadly sins, ad agency wags often say, are the
key to selling products. Fear, envy, greed, hatred, and lust: these are
the basic tools for good propaganda and effective advertising. By
far, the most powerful motivating emotion—the top,
most-sought-after copy writers will tell you, in an unguarded
moment—is fear, followed closely by greed.

Good propaganda appeals to neither logic nor morality. Morality

and ethics are the death of sales. This is why communist
propaganda actually hastened the collapse of communism: the
creatures running the Commie Empire thought they should appeal
to morality by calling for people to engage in sacrifice for the
greater good. They gave endless, droning speeches about the
inevitably of communist triumph, based on the Hegelian dialectic.
Not only were they wrong: their approach to selling their (virtually

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unsellable) theory was not clever enough. American propagandists

(we can be jingoistically proud to say) would have been able to
maintain the absurd social experiment called communism a little
longer. They would have scrapped all the theory and focused on
appealing images. Though the Commies tried to do this through
huge, flag-waving rallies, the disparity between their alleged ideals
and the reality they created was just too great.

One tyrant who did take American propaganda to heart was

Adolph Hitler. Hitler learned to admire American propaganda
through a young American expatriate who described to him, in
glowing detail, how Americans enjoyed the atmosphere at football
games. This American expatriate, with the memorable name of
Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstängl, told the Führer how Americans could be
whipped up into a frenzy through blaring music, group cheers, and
chants against the enemy. Hitler, genius of evil as he was,
immediately saw the value in this form of propaganda and
incorporated it into his own rise to power. Prior to Hitler, German
political rhetoric was dry, intellectual, and uninspiring. Hitler
learned the value of spectacle in whipping up the emotions; the
famed Nuremberg rallies were really little more than glorified
football halftime shows. Rejecting boring, intellectual rhetoric,
Hitler learned to appeal to deeply emotional but meaningless
phrases, like the appeal to "blood and soil." The German people
bought it wholesale. Hitler also called for blind loyalty to the
"Fatherland," which eerily echoes our own new cabinet level post of
"Homeland" Security.

If you study Nazi propaganda, you will be struck by how well it

appeals to gut-level emotions and images—but not thought. You will
see pictures of elderly German women hugging fresh-faced young
babies, with captions about the bright future the Führer has brought
to German. In fact, German propaganda borrowed the American
technique of relying, not so much on words, but on images alone:
pictures of handsome German soldiers, sturdy peasants in native
costume, and the like. Take a look at any American car commercial
featuring rugged farmers tossing bales of hay into the backs of their
pickups, and you’ve seen the source from which the Nazis borrowed
their propaganda techniques.

The Germans have a well-deserved reputation for producing a lot

of really smart people, but this did not prevent them from being
completely vulnerable to American-style propaganda. Amazingly, a
nation raised on the greatest classical music, the profoundest
scientists, the greatest poets, actually fell for propaganda that led
them into a hopeless, two-front war against most of the world. Being
smart is, in itself, no defense against skilled American propaganda,

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unless you know and understand the techniques, so you can resist
them.

American politicians learned, early in the twentieth century, that

using emotional sales techniques won elections. Furthermore, they
learned that emotional appeals got them what they wanted as they
advanced towards their long-term goal of becoming Masters of the
Universe. From this, we get our modern lexicon of political speech,
carefully crafted to appeal to powerful emotions, with either no
appeal to reason, or (better yet) a vague appeal to something that
sounds foggily reasonable, but is so obscure that no one will bother
to dissect it.

Franklin Roosevelt understood this, which is why he called for

Social Security. Security is an emotional appeal: no one is against
security, are they? Roosevelt backed up his campaign with a
masterful appeal to emotions: images of happy, elderly
grandparents smiling while hugging their grandchildren, with
everything in the world going right because of Social Security. All
kinds of government programs were sold on the basis of appealing
images and phrases. Roosevelt even appealed to America’s
traditional love of freedom, spinning that term by multiplying it into
the new Four Freedoms, including Freedom from Want and Freedom
from Fear. Well, what heartless human being could possibly be
against that? The Four Freedoms were promoted with images of
parents tucking their children cozily into bed, and a happy family
gathered around a Thanksgiving dinner, obviously free from want.
The campaign was also based on that most powerful of all selling
emotions: fear. If you don’t support Social Security, the ads
suggested, you will live your last years in utter destitution.

Putzi Hanfstängl, viewing Roosevelt’s evil brilliance from Nazi

Germany, was probably jealous.

American advertising executives learned the value of presenting

a single image or slogan, and repeating it over and over again until it
became ingrained in the public’s consciousness. Thus we are all
aware that Ivory Soap is so pure that it floats: a point that has been
repeated for the better part of a century. I’m not sure why I should
be impressed that a bar of soap floats, but on the other hand, it’s
not intended that I think that far. Politicians now sell their programs
the way the advertising creeps sell soap: they dream up a slogan
and repeat it over and over again. Thus we get empty slogans like
The New Frontier, The New World Order (that one was poorly
chosen; it sounds too much like an actual idea), or Reinventing
Government (an idea that everyone should favor, except that the
idea behind it really means Keeping Government the Same, only no

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one is supposed to think that far). Empty grandeur sells political

products.

Both German and American politicians carried the use of banners

to new heights. Flags are impressive emotional symbols,
particularly when waved by thousands of enthusiastic people: it’s a
rare individual who can resist the collective enthusiasm of
thousands of his fellow human beings, cheering about their
collective greatness. Putzi Hanfstängl understood this, advising
Hitler to fill his public spectacles with not just a few, but countless
thousands of swastika flags. The swastika, too, was a brilliant stroke
of advertising and propaganda: it has become, in the public
consciousness, the official emblem of Nazism, even though it had
nothing to do with Germany. In fact, swastikas were used by ancient
Hindus and American tribes, but I’m not aware of it being used by
anyone in Germany prior to Hitler.

Now observe how Americans in the current crisis have taken to

displaying huge flags on their cars. Flags are not rational
arguments; they are instruments for whipping up the Madness of
Crowds. Observe how many Americans have, with a straight face,
called for a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag desecration,
oblivious to the obvious contradictions such an amendment would
have with the rest of the Constitution. But again, if you learn nothing
else about propaganda, learn that it must not appeal to rationality.

Politicians don’t just use warm, fuzzy images to sell us on the road
to tyranny. They also need emotional appeals to intimidate their
enemies. Thus the small percentage of the population that really
does use thought and reason more than emotion must be
demonized. Roosevelt managed this with some masterful
propaganda strokes. Those who opposed him were Isolationists,
and Malefactors of Great Wealth! (The gut-level emotion appealed
to here is envy.) Roosevelt thus showed himself to be an early
master of what former California Governor Jerry Brown called
"buzz words"; that is, words intended to silence counter-argument
by appealing to unassailable emotional images. No one is for
Isolation, and almost everyone reacts to an appeal to hate anyone
who has a lot of money. The latter appeal, of course, had great
power during the Great Depression, which Roosevelt managed to
maintain for the entire length of his presidency, all the while blaming
others for its evils. Was this guy an evil genius, or what?

The propaganda cleverness used in successfully branding

anti-war people as Isolationists is breathtaking. After all, a rational
person (ah, keep in mind, that’s not a common individual) realizes
that those who oppose war are the exact opposite of isolationists.

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The Old Right at the time called for peaceful, commercial relations
with all nations, based on neutrality in foreign affairs. If anything,
those who oppose war and meddling in other countries’ affairs are
the opposite of Isolationists as they really stand for open, profitable
relationships with other countries. The people who stand for such
ideas do not "sell" them by means of strictly emotional appeals, so
they tend to lose the propaganda wars. When Roosevelt succeeded
in whipping the country up into a war-frenzy after steering us into
the Pearl Harbor fiasco, the Old Right realized their opposition to
the war was hopeless.

The role of the government propaganda camps known as public

schools cannot be discounted in all this. Schools are not so much
centers of learning as they are behavior conditioning camps in
which children are taught to be unquestioningly obedient to
authority. Since reason and morality are the death of propaganda,
schools busy themselves with systematically stunting students’
ability to reason and think in moral terms. Because the government
owns the propaganda camps, it’s not surprising that the beneficiary
of the propaganda is almost always the government. Americans
accept obvious absurdities because they were drilled into their
heads, year after year, in the government propaganda camps until
they became true and unquestionable. Thus, everyone knows
Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression, even though the worst
depression years were precisely those in which he and his party
controlled every branch of government. Everyone knows Lincoln
was a great president because he saved "government by the
people" and freed the slaves, even though he became a war tyrant
and only freed the slaves when it was politically convenient to do so.
Wilson, everyone knows, made the world "safe for democracy",
evidently by instituting a draft and getting America involved in a
European war that was fought for reasons no one to this day can
fathom. When minds are young and pliable—government experts
understand this principle—you can fill them with nonsense that is
practically impossible to root out. Laughable falsehoods in effect
become true because everyone knows them to be true.

Advertising executives learned, early on, that companies could

not be too obvious in using their propaganda. If their agenda could
be clearly seen, then it could also be rejected. The answer to this
problem was the American propaganda technique of the
"independent expert" and the "guy on the street." One of these
appeals to our timidity before authority, and the other to our
smugness when dealing with someone at or below our perceived
social level. Of course, these two techniques are really just two
sides of the same coin. In product advertising, sports heroes and
celebrities are used to sell corn flakes because no one would listen

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to the president of Kellogg telling us why corn flakes are so good. In

selling detergent, plain-looking housewives are preferable to sexy
models because they look just like us. In political propaganda,
"experts" are often trotted out to tell us, in convoluted, circular
reasoning, why minimum wage laws are really good for us, why a
little bit of inflation is good, or why we just can’t rely on the free
market for something so crucially important as education. Or, using
the "guy on the street" approach, we are told to support idiotic wars
because the common soldiers ("our boys"), cannot function unless
they know we stand united behind them. If the rare sensible person
tries to argue against war, he is accused of making things harder
for "our boys."

This brings us to the latest iteration of masterful American

Propaganda: the War on Terrorism. Any attempt to explain why the
terrorists (crazed as they obviously were) felt motivated to attack
the World Trade Center is looked on as "siding with the terrorists."
Indeed, Ashcroft and Bush have said, in so many words, that if you
don’t support them in everything they do, you stand with the
terrorists. Ashcroft and Bush have evidently studied their
propaganda lessons from World War II, when Roosevelt silenced all
opposition by accusing anyone who stood against him of
undermining the war effort. Anyone who suggests we should not
risk World War III by invading the Middle East is alternately accused
of siding with the terrorists, of slandering the memory of those who
died, or (of course) of not "standing by our boys" in times of great
need. It’s easy to feel alienated in a nation of flag-wavers singing
patriotic hymns. The fact that they are marching lockstep to a world
in which the government will monitor their e-mail, snoop into their
bank accounts, and eventually throw them in jail for voicing
opposition doesn’t seem to bother them one bit.

Now, most libertarians or otherwise thoughtful people will react

with dismay when told that most of their fellow human beings react
so unthinkingly to sock-you-in-the-gut emotional propaganda.
Unfortunately, most people are not capable of really thinking things
out. Most people really do buy perfume because of the emotional
imagery. Most people really do believe the "independent expert",
whether in politics or buying a car. Most people want to go with the
crowd, or follow the leader. To do otherwise requires independent
thought and the willingness to be ostracized, which is an
unbearable psychological burden for many.

If you want to take heart, remember that the Vietnam War ended
because a few people just continued to speak against it, despite the
overwhelming government propaganda for it. The fact that a lot of
the anti-war protesters were motivated by the wrong reasons

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(support of commies), doesn’t matter in light of the fact they were

able to turn the tide. They were right, even if for the wrong reasons.
If advocates of freedom continue to speak against the creeping
tyranny that our masters justify on the phony grounds of the War on
Terrorism, we might just be able to prevent the transition from
Republic to Empire. The thing about propaganda is that, once it is
exposed for what it is, no one listens anymore. People tune it out,
just as the slaves in Russia and China learned to tune out their
official propaganda.

Paul Weber’s novel, Transfiguration, is available at

http://www.xlibris.com/Transfiguration.html.

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