[Marbux]

A couple of areas of disagreement:

1. I spent 27 months in Viet Nam working as an Army psychological operations tactical teamleader. Sigmund Freud gets way too much credit for modern propaganda methods. Modern propaganda techniques did not take hold before B.F. Skinner’s pioneering work in behavioral psychology. Propaganda today is an applied science with its feet firmly planted in behavioral psychology’s principles of positive reinforcement and repeated, scientifically valid target audience opinion testing, from baseline through successful attainment of the shift in opinion that is targeted. “The key to centralized planning and decentralized execution of PSYOP is clarity in the statement of broad themes and *measurable* PSYOP objectives. Broad themes that originate at policy-maker level set the parameters that PSYOP must operate within. *Measurable* PSYOP objectives ensure that PSYOP series are *behavior-focused* and reflect national and theater policy and strategy.” U.S. Army Field Manual3-05.302 Tactical Psychological Operations (October 2005), pg. 1-4, https://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-302.pdf (emphasis added). Freud is old-hat. Skinner rules.

2. I don’t view 2014 as a particularly noteworthy year on the government propaganda front. In 1969, I had an epiphany: “When you find yourself part of an invading force in a foreign land fighting patriots, it’s time for a reality check on your world view.” I did my reality check that day and every day since. Reality instructed that I could not morally return to my prewar job at a daily newspaper because it dispensed only propaganda. Then as now, the most important mainstream media propaganda is spoonfed to it by government officials.

3. There is nothing new about government creating enemies as a means of social control:

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretense of defending, have enslaved the people.” James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 29, 1787.

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” Gen. Douglas MacArthur, source: Whan, ed. “A Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,” (1965); Nation, August 17, 1957.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken.

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
…
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” Hermann Goering, quote verified, https://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp

Paul E. “Marbux” Merrell, J.D.

[Author]

Posts