four stages in preparing a nation for war:

http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media#globalissues-org

Award-winning investigative journalist, Phillip Knightley, in an article for the British paper, The Guardian also points out four stages in preparing a nation for war:

1. The crisis

The reporting of a crisis which negotiations appear unable to resolve. Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation. The media reports this as “We’re on the brink of war”, or “War is inevitable”, etc.

2. The demonisation of the enemy’s leader

Comparing the leader with Hitler is a good start because of the instant images that Hitler’s name provokes.

3. The demonisation of the enemy as individuals

For example, to suggest the enemy is insane.

4. Atrocities

Even making up stories to whip up and strengthen emotional reactions.

Knightley also points to the dilemma that while some stories are known to have been fabrications and outright lies, others may be true. The trouble is, he asks, “how can we tell?” His answer is unfortunately not too reassuring: “The media demands that we trust it but too often that trust has been betrayed.” The difficulty that honest journalists face is also hinted to in another article by Knightley:

One difficulty is that the media have little or no memory. War correspondents have short working lives and there is no tradition or means for passing on their knowledge and experience. The military, on the other hand, is an institution and goes on forever. The military learned a lot from Vietnam and these days plans its media strategy with as much attention as its military strategy.

— Phillip Knightley, Fighting dirty, The Guardian, March 20, 2000

Miren Guiterrez, editor-in-chief of Inter Press Service notes a number of elements of propaganda taking the more recent wars into account, the “War on terror” and the Iraq crisis. Summing up his short but detailed report, he includes the following as propaganda strategies:

• Incompleteness
• Inaccuracy
• Driving the agenda
• Milking the story (maximizing media coverage of a particular issue by the careful use of briefings, leaking pieces of a jigsaw to different outlets, allowing journalists to piece the story together and drive the story up the news agenda, etc.)
• Exploiting that we want to believe the best of ourselves
• Perception Management (in particular by using PR firms)
• Reinforcing existing attitudes
• Simple, repetitious and emotional phrases (e.g. war on terror, axis of evil, weapons of mass destruction, shock and awe, war of liberation, etc)

Military Control of Information

Military control of information during war time is also a major contributing factor to propaganda, especially when the media go along with it without question. The military recognizes the values of media and information control very well.

Information Operations

The military often manipulates the mainstream media, by restricting or managing what information is presented and hence what the public are told. For them it is paramount to control the media. This can involve all manner of activities, from organizing media sessions and daily press briefings, or through providing managed access to war zones, to even planting stories. This has happened throughout the 20th century. Over time then, the way that the media covers conflicts degrades in quality, critique and objectiveness.

“Information is the currency of victory” an August 1996 U.S. Army field manual. From a military’s perspective, information warfare is another front on which a battle must be fought. However, as well as needing to deceive adversaries, in order to maintain public support, information to their own public must no doubt be managed as well. That makes sense from a military perspective. Sometimes the public can be willing to sacrifice detailed knowledge. But that can also lead to unaccountability and when information that is presented has been managed such, propaganda is often the result. Beelman also describes how this Information Operations is used to manage information:

For reporters covering this war [on terrorism], the challenge is not just in getting unfettered and uncensored access to U.S. troops and the battlefield—a long and mostly losing struggle in the past—but in discerning between information and disinformation. That is made all the more difficult by a 24-hour news cycle, advanced technology, and the military’s growing fondness for a discipline it calls “Information Operations.” IO, as it is known, groups together information functions ranging from public affairs (PA, the military spokespersons corps) to military deception and psychological operations, or PSYOP. What this means is that people whose job traditionally has been to talk to the media and divulge truthfully what they are able to tell now work hand-in-glove with those whose job it is to support battlefield operations with information, not all of which may be truthful.

— Maud S. Beelman, The Dangers of Disinformation in the War on Terrorism, Coverage of Terrorism Women and Journalism: International Perspectives, from Nieman Reports Magazine, Winter 2001, Vol. 55, No.4, p.16. (from The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University)

Danny Schechter, also referring to the article above by Beelman, describes Information Operations more bluntly as being “a way of obscuring and sanitizing that negative-sounding term ‘propaganda’ so that our ‘information warriors’ can do their thing with a minimum of public attention as they seek to engineer friendly write ups and cumulative impact.” This, he points out, can be accomplished via several strategies:

                    ·         Overloading the Media»

• This can be done by providing too much information!
• Schechter gives an example of the Kosovo War, where “briefers at NATO’s headquarters in Belgium boasted that this was the key to information control. ‘They would gorge the media with information,’ Beelman writes, quoting one as saying, ‘When you make the media happy, the media will not look for the rest of the story.’”
·         Ideological Appeals»

• A common way to do this is to appeal to patriotism and safeguarding the often unarticulated “national interest”
• Schechter describes, how Condaleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials persuaded the networks to kill bin Laden videos and other Al-Jazeera work during the initial months after the September 11 2001 tragedy. This is nothing new, however, as he points out; “All administrations try to seduce and co-opt the media.” (and of course, this happens all around the world.)
• Schechter describes the ramifications: “It is this ideological conformity and world view that makes it relatively easy for a well-oiled and sophisticated IO propaganda machine to keep the U.S. media in line, with the avid cooperation of the corporate sector, which owns and controls most media outlets. Some of those companies, such as NBC parent General Electric, have long been a core component of that nexus of shared interests that President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. As Noam Chomsky and others have argued, that complex has expanded into a military, industrial and MEDIA complex, in which IO is but one refinement.”
·         Spinning Information»
• Press briefings by military institutions such as NATO, Pentagon etc, where journalist’s questions are answered and information is presented is of course a form of spin. It is the spin that the military will put on it.
• Journalists no doubt expect this, but true to many media propaganda models, seldom are such “official” statements verified and followed up on, especially if from one’s own nation, with whom there is often a lot of trust. A result of this is propaganda and spin becoming the official version.
·         Withholding Information»
• Of course, the military can often hide behind this one!
• Sometimes from a military operational perspective it can be understood why they don’t want to give much (or any) real details. Looked in isolation from other issues, this seems like an understandable and acceptable military strategy.
• Yet, when combined with the other propaganda strategies, it is another way to withhold information.
·         Co-Option And Collusion»
• As Danny Schechter asks on this issue, “why do we in the media go along with this approach time and again? We are not stupid. We are not robots. Too many of us have DIED trying to get this story (and other stories). Ask any journalists and they will tell you that no one tells them what to write or what to do. Yet there is a homogenized flavor and Pentagon echo to much coverage of this war that shames our profession. Why? Is it because reporters buy into the ideology of the mission? Because there are few visible war critics to provide dissenting takes? Or is it because information management has been so effective as to disallow any other legitimate approach? An uncritical stance is part of the problem. Disseminating misinformation often adds up to an inaccurate picture of where we are in this war.”
• Stratfor, a global intelligence consultant comments on the war on terrorism saying that the media have become cheerleaders as “Coverage of the ‘war on terrorism’ has reversed the traditional role between the press and the military.” The problem with this, as they continue, is that “The reversal of roles between media and military creates public expectations that can affect the prosecution of the war.” Or, more bluntly put, the media becomes an effective mouthpiece for propaganda.

Embedded Journalists: An Advantage for the Military

During the short invasion of Iraq in 2003, journalists were “embedded” with various Coalition forces. This was an idea born from the public relations industry, and provided media outlets a detailed and fascinating view for their audiences.

For the military, however, it provided a means to control what large audiences would see, to some extent. Independent journalists would be looked upon more suspiciously. In a way, embedded journalists were unwittingly (sometimes knowingly) making a decision to be biased in their reporting, in favor of the Coalition troops. If an embedded journalist was to report unfavorably on coalition forces they were accompanying they would not get any cooperation.

So, in a sense allowing journalists to get closer meant the military had more chance to try and manage the message.

In U.K., the History Channel broadcasted a documentary on August 21, 2004, titled War Spin: Correspondent. This documentary looked at Coalition media management for the Iraq war and noted numerous things including the following:

• Embedded journalists allowed the military to maximize imagery while providing minimal insight into the real issues;
• Central Command (where all those military press briefings were held) was the main center from which to:
• Filter, manage and drip-feed journalists with what they wanted to provide;
• Gloss over set-backs, while dwelling on successes;
• Limit the facts and context;
• Even feed lies to journalists;
• Use spin in various ways, such as making it seems as though reports are coming from troops on the ground, which Central Command can then confirm, so as to appear real;
• Carefully plan the range of topics that could be discussed with reporters, and what to avoid.

In summary then, the documentary concluded and implied that the media had successfully been designated a mostly controllable role by the military, which would no doubt improve in the future.

For more about the issues of embedded journalism during the Iraq invasion, various propaganda techniques employed, and more, see this web site’s Iraq media section.

Propaganda when Preparing or Justifying War

http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media#globalissues-org

In preparing for or justifying war, additional techniques are often employed, knowingly or unknowingly:

Ottosen identifies several key stages of a military campaign to “soften up” public opinion through the media in preparation for an armed intervention. These are:

The Preliminary Stage—during which the country concerned comes to the news, portrayed as a cause for “mounting concern” because of poverty/dictatorship/anarchy;

The Justification Stage—during which big news is produced to lend urgency to the case for armed intervention to bring about a rapid restitution of “normality”;

The Implementation Stage—when pooling and censorship provide control of coverage;

The Aftermath—during which normality is portrayed as returning to the region, before it once again drops down the news agenda.

O’Kane notes “there is always a dead baby story” and it comes at the key point of the Justification Stage—in the form of a story whose apparent urgency brooks no delay—specifically, no time for cool deliberation or negotiating on peace proposals. Human interest stories … are ideal for engendering this atmosphere.

— The Peace Journalist Option, Poiesis.org, August 1997

(O’Kane’s reference to the dead baby story is about the 1991 Gulf War where a U.S. public relations firm got a Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter to pose as a nurse claiming she saw Iraqi troops killing babies in hospitals. The purpose of this was to create arousal and demonize Iraq so war was more acceptable. More information about this is on this site’s Iraq section.)

propaganda comes in four basic varieties

http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media#globalissues-org

 Arthur Siegel, a social science professor at York University in Toronto, describes four levels of varieties of propaganda:

No matter how it is spread, propaganda comes in four basic varieties, said Arthur Siegel, social science professor at York University in Toronto, whose 1996 book Radio Canada International examines World War II and Cold War propaganda.

“The first level is the Big Lie, adapted by Hitler and Stalin. The state-controlled Egyptian press has been spreading a Big Lie, saying the World Trade Center was attacked by Israel to embarrass Arabs,” said Siegel.

“The second layer says, ‘It doesn’t have to be the truth, so long as it’s plausible.’

“The third strategy is to tell the truth but withhold the other side’s point of view.

“The fourth and most productive is to tell the truth, the good and the bad, the losses and the gains.

“Governments in Western society take the last three steps. They avoid the Big Lie, which nobody here will swallow,” Siegel said.

— Beth Gillin, U.S. intensifies the war of words, The Philadelphia Inequirer, October 21, 2001

With the last point above, Siegel is pointing out that as well as “enemies” having propaganda mechanisms, we also have our own propaganda mechanisms.

List of tactics used in propaganda

http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media#globalissues-org

Those who promote the negative image of the “enemy” may often reinforce it with rhetoric about the righteousness of themselves; the attempt is to muster up support and nurture the belief that what is to be done is in the positive and beneficial interest of everyone. Often, the principles used to demonize the other, is not used to judge the self, leading to accusations of double standards and hypocrisy.

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch.9

The list of tactics used in propaganda listed further above is also expressed in a similar way by Johann Galtung, a professor of Peace Studies and summarized here by Danny Schechter:

[Professor] Galtung laid out 12 points of concern where journalism often goes wrong when dealing with violence. Each implicitly suggests more explicit remedies.

1.  Decontextualizing violence: focusing on the irrational without looking at the reasons for unresolved conflicts and polarization.

2.  Dualism: reducing the number of parties in a conflict to two, when often more are involved. Stories that just focus on internal developments often ignore such outside or “external” forces as foreign governments and transnational companies.

3.  Manicheanism: portraying one side as good and demonizing the other as “evil.”

4.  Armageddon: presenting violence as inevitable, omitting alternatives.

5.  Focusing on individual acts of violence while avoiding structural causes, like poverty, government neglect and military or police repression.

6.  Confusion: focusing only on the conflict arena (i.e., the battlefield or location of violent incidents) but not on the forces and factors that influence the violence.

7.  Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus never explaining why there are acts of revenge and spirals of violence.

8.  Failure to explore the causes of escalation and the impact of media coverage itself.

9.  Failure to explore the goals of outside interventionists, especially big powers.

10.             Failure to explore peace proposals and offer images of peaceful outcomes.

11.             Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with actual peace.

   12. Omitting reconciliation: conflicts tend to reemerge if attention is not paid to efforts to heal fractured societies. When news about attempts to resolve conflicts are absent, fatalism is reinforced. That can help engender even more violence, when people have no images or information about possible peaceful outcomes and the promise of healing.

War, Propaganda and the Media

http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media#globalissues-org

• by Anup Shah
• This Page Last Updated Thursday, March 31, 2005

We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.

— Walter Lippmann

Probably every conflict is fought on at least two grounds: the battlefield and the minds of the people via propaganda. The “good guys” and the “bad guys” can often both be guilty of misleading their people with distortions, exaggerations, subjectivity, inaccuracy and even fabrications, in order to receive support and a sense of legitimacy.

This web page has the following sub-sections:

1.  Elements of Propaganda

2.  Propaganda and War

1.  Propaganda when Preparing or Justifying War

2.  Military Control of Information

1.  Information Operations

2.  Embedded Journalists: An Advantage for the Military

3.  Dilemma of Journalists and Wartime Coverage

3.  Wider Propaganda

4.  Propaganda in Democracies

5.  Why Does So Much Propaganda Work?

1.  Wanting to believe the best of ourselves

2.  Fear-mongering and distorting facts

3.  Media management and public relations is very professional

4.  Disseminating prepackaged, even fake news

5.  Smear tactics are increasing in sophistication

6.  Narrowing the Range of Debate

6.  Some Detailed Examples

Elements of Propaganda

Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support.

While the issue of propaganda often is discussed in the context of militarism, war and war-mongering, it is around us in all aspects of life.

As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:

• Using selective stories that come over as wide-covering and objective.
• Partial facts, or historical context
• Reinforcing reasons and motivations to act due to threats on the security of the individual.
• Narrow sources of “experts” to provide insights in to the situation. (For example, the mainstream media typically interview retired military personnel for many conflict-related issues, or treat official government sources as fact, rather than just one perspective that needs to be verified and researched).
• Demonizing the “enemy” who does not fit the picture of what is “right”.
• Using a narrow range of discourse, whereby judgments are often made while the boundary of discourse itself, or the framework within which the opinions are formed, are often not discussed. The narrow focus then helps to serve the interests of the propagandists.

Some of the following sections look into how propaganda is used in various ways, expanding on the above list of tactics and devices.

Propaganda and War

At times of war, or build up for war, messages of extremities and hate, combined with emotions of honor and righteousness interplay to provide powerful propaganda for a cause.

The first casualty when war comes is Truth

— U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917

Many say that it is inevitable in war that people will die. Yet, in many cases, war itself is not inevitable, and propaganda is often employed to go closer to war, if that is the preferred foreign policy option. Indeed, once war starts, civilian casualties are unfortunately almost a guaranteed certainty.

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

— Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during World War II

Propaganda, American-style

by Noam Chomsky

http://www.zpub.com/un/chomsky.html

Pointing to the massive amounts of propaganda spewed by government and institutions around the world, observers have called our era the age of Orwell. But the fact is that Orwell was a latecomer on the scene.

As early as World War I, American historians offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task they called "historical engineering," by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they would serve state policy.

In this instance, the U.S. government wanted to silence opposition to the war. This represents a version of Orwell's 1984, even before Orwell was writing.

In 1921, the famous American journalist Walter Lippmann said that the art of democracy requires what he called the "manufacture of consent." This phrase is an Orwellian euphemism for thought control.

The idea is that in a state such as the U.S. where the government can't control the people by force, it had better control what they think..

The Soviet Union is at the opposite end of the spectrum from us in its domestic freedoms. It's essentially a country run by the bludgeon. It's very easy to determine what propaganda is in the USSR: what the state produces is propaganda.

That's the kind of thing that Orwell described in 1984 (not a very good book in my opinion). 1984 is so popular because it's trivial and it attacks our enemies. If Orwell had dealt with a different problem-- ourselves--his book wouldn't have been so popular. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been published.

In totalitarian societies where there's a Ministry of Truth, propaganda doesn't really try to control your thoughts. It just gives you the party line.

It says, "Here's the official doctrine; don't disobey and you won't get in trouble. What you think is not of great importance to anyone. If you get out of line we'll do something to you because we have force."

Democratic societies can't work like that, because the state is much more limited in its capacity to control behavior by force. Since the voice of the people is allowed to speak out, those in power better control what that voice says--in other words, control what people think. One of the ways to do this is to create political debate that appears to embrace many opinions, but actually stays within very narrow margins. You have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions--and that those assumptions are the basis of the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, the debate is permissible.

The Vietnam War is a classic example of America's propaganda system. In the mainstream media--the New York Times, CBS, and so on-- there was a lively debate about the war. It was between people called "doves" and people called "hawks." The hawks said, "If we keep at it we can win." The doves said, "Even if we keep at it, it would probably be too costly for use, and besides, maybe we're killing too many people." Both sides agreed on one thing. We had a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam. Doves and hawks alike refused to admit that aggression was taking place. They both called our military presence in Southeast Asia the defense of South Vietnam, substituting "defense" for "aggression" in the standard Orwellian manner. In reality, we were attacking South Vietnam just as surely as the Soviets later attacked Afghanistan.

Consider the following facts. In 1962 the U.S. Air Force began direct attacks against the rural population of South Vietnam with heavy bombing and defoliation . It was part of a program intended to drive millions of people into detention camps where, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, they would be "protected" from the guerrillas they were supporting--the "Viet Cong," the southern branch of the former anti-French resistance (the Vietminh). This is what our government calls aggression or invasion when conducted by some official enemy.

The Saigon government had no legitimacy and little popular support, and its leadership was regularly overthrown in U.S.-backed coups when it was feared they might arrange a settlement with the Viet Cong. Some 70,000 "Viet Cong" had already been killed in the U.S.-directed terror campaign before the outright U.S. invasion took place in 1972.

Like the Soviets in Afghanistan, we tried to establish a government in Saigon to invite us in. We had to overthrow regime after regime in that effort. Finally we simply invaded outright. That is plain, simple aggression. But anyone in the U.S. who thought that our policies in Vietnam were wrong in principle was not admitted to the discussion about the war. The debate was essentially over tactics.

Even at the peak of opposition to the U.S. war, only a minuscule portion of the intellectuals opposed the war out of principle--on the grounds that aggression is wrong. Most intellectuals came to oppose it well after leading business circles did--on the "pragmatic" grounds that the costs were too high.

Strikingly omitted from the debate was the view that the U.S. could have won, but that it would have been wrong to allow such military aggression to succeed. This was the position of the authentic peace movement but it was seldom heard in the mainstream media. If you pick up a book on American history and look at the Vietnam War, there is no such event as the American attack on South Vietnam.

For the past 22 years, I have searched in vain for even a single reference in mainstream journalism or scholarship to an "American invasion of South Vietnam" or American "aggression" in South Vietnam. In America's doctrinal system, there is no such event. It's out of history, down Orwell's memory hole.

If the U.S. were a totalitarian state, the Ministry of Truth would simply have said, "It's right for us to go into Vietnam. Don't argue with it." People would have recognized that as the propaganda system, and they would have gone on thinking whatever they wanted. They would have plainly seen that we were attacking Vietnam, just as we can see the Soviets are attacking Afghanistan.

People are much freer in the U.S., they are allowed to express themselves. That's why it's necessary for those in power to control everyone's thought, to try and make it appear as if the only issues in matters such as U.S. intervention in Vietnam are tactical: Can we get away with it? There is no discussion of right or wrong.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. propaganda system did its job partially but not entirely. Among educated people it worked very well. Studies show that among the more educated parts of the population, the government's propaganda about the war is now accepted unquestioningly.

One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda.

Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system--and they believe what the system expects them to believe. By and large, they're part of the privileged elite, and share the interests and perceptions of those in power.

On the other hand, the government had problems in controlling the opinions of the general population.

According to some of the latest polls, over 70 percent of Americans still thought the war was, to quote the Gallup Poll, "fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake."

Due to the widespread opposition to the Vietnam War, the propaganda system lost its grip on the beliefs of many Americans. They grew skeptical about what they were told. In this case there's even a name for the erosion of belief. It's called the "Vietnam Syndrome," a grave disease in the eyes of America's elites because people understand too much.

Let me gives on more example of the powerful propaganda system at work in the U.S.--the congressional vote on contra aid in March 1986.

For three months prior to the vote, the administration was heating up the political atmosphere, trying to reverse the congressional restrictions on aid to the terrorist army that's attacking Nicaragua.

I was interested in how the media was going to respond to the administration campaign for the contras. So I studied two national newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times. In January, February, and March, I went through every one of their editorials, opinion pieces, and the columns written by their own columnists. There were 85 pieces. Of these, all were anti-Sandinista. On that issue, no discussion was tolerable.

There are two striking facts about the Sandinista government, as compared with our allies in Central America--Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

One is that the Sandinista government doesn't slaughter its population. That's a well-recognized fact.

Second, Nicaragua is the only one of those countries in which the government has tried to direct social services to the poor. This too, is not a matter of debate; it is conceded on all sides to be true.

On the other hand, our allies in Guatemala and El Salvador are among the world's worst terrorist states. So far in the 1980s, they have slaughtered over 150,000 of their own citizens, with U.S. support. These nations do little for their populations except torture, terrorize, and kill them. Honduras is a little different. In Honduras, there's a government of the rich that robs the poor. It doesn't kill on the scale of El Salvador or Guatemala, but a large part of the population is starving to death.

So in examining the 85 editorials, I also looked for these two facts about Nicaragua. The fact that the Sandinistas are radically different from our Central American allies in that they don't slaughter their population was not mentioned once. That they have carried out social reforms for the poor was referred to in two phrases, both buried. Two phrases in 85 columns on one crucial issue, zero phrases in 85 columns on another.

That's really remarkable control over thought on a highly debated issue. After that I went through the editorials on El Salvador and Nicaragua from 1980 to the present; it's essentially the same story.

Nicaragua, a country under attack by the regional superpower, did on October 15, 1985, what we did in Hawaii during World War II: instituted a state of siege. There was a huge uproar in the mainstream American press--editorials, denunciations, claims that the Sandinistas are totalitarian Stalinist monsters, and so on.

Two days after that, on October 17, El Salvador renewed its state of siege. Instituted in March 1980 and renewed monthly afterwards, El Salvador's state of siege was far more harsh than Nicaragua's. It blocked freedom of movement and virtually all civil rights. It was the framework within which the U.S.-trained and -organized army has carried out torture and slaughter.

The New York Times considered the Nicaraguan state of siege a great atrocity. The Salvadoran state of siege, far harsher in its methods and it application, was never mentioned in 160 New York Times editorials on Nicaragua and El Salvador, up to now [mid-1986, the time of this interview].

We are often told the country is a budding democracy, so it can't possibly be having a state of siege. According to news reports on El Salvador, Duarte is heading a moderate centrist government under attack by terrorists of the left and of the right. This is complete nonsense. Every human rights investigation, even the U.S. government in private, concedes that terrorism is being carried out by the Salvadoran government itself. The death squads are the security forces. Duarte is simply a front for terrorists. But that is seldom said publicly. All this falls under Walter Lippmann's notion of "the manufacture of consent." Democracy permits the voice of the people to be heard, and it is the task of the intellectual to ensure that this voice endorses what leaders perceive to be the right course.

Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism. The techniques have been honed to a high art in the U.S. and elsewhere, far beyond anything that Orwell dreamed of. The device of feigned dissent (as practiced by the Vietnam- era "doves," who criticized the war on the grounds of effectiveness and not principle) is one of the more subtle means, though simple lying and suppressing fact and other crude techniques are also highly effective.

For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination.

These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the propaganda system to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling or unwitting instruments.