Propaganda

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Propaganda

• The individual, and the state

2
The Milosevic speech a quick review

• We saw
• Milosevic gave a speech worthy of Martin Luther
  King, Jr., or Mahatma Gandhi
  
• The press reported that he had given a speech
  worthy of Hitler and they even called him the
  new Hitler
  
• But the press had already translated the speech
  (e.g. the BBC) or else had been present at the
  event (e.g. The Independent)
  
• And in 1989, when the speech was given the entire
  media reported the speech accurately as tolerant.

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The question

• So how can it be that, 7 years later, when NATO
  was getting ready to bomb Serbia, the entire
  mainstream Western media, without exception,
  reported this as hate speech?
• How can it be that afterwards, not one mainstream
  newspaper, TV channel, magazine, etc., made a
  scandal of this?
  
• Mind you the BBC translation of the speech can
  be found on Lexis-Nexis, an online database that
  ALL journalists use, within a minute!

4
What was the point of this course?

• If you understand population dynamics
• That is, the causal properties of Darwinian
  systems.
  
• And you understand human social-learning
  psychology
  
• Then there is a science to be made about how
  memes get into peoples heads, and which memes
  remain stable, and why.

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Two-edged sword

• This kind of understanding can be used for evil,
  or for good.
  
• Like any kind of knowledge.
• For good If you are aware of the processes that
  usually get you to acquire ideas, you may exert
  more control over which ideas you acquire.
  
• For evil If you know how to get memes into
  peoples heads, you can lie to them and they will
  never know it.

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What is propaganda?

• What is it?
• The institutionalized production of lies.
• Who produces it?
• Anybody with an interest that might be derailed
  by the truth.
  
• What kinds of governments will produce
  propaganda?
  
• Any government.
• Thats why we need a free press.

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Propaganda is meme technology

• A propagandist is trying to put a meme in your
  head.
  
• The only way to protect yourself from the
  propagandist is to be aware.
  
• Why? Because the propagandist is a memeticist.
• He pays attention to the things that make memes
  successful.
  
• If you dont also have this knowledge, you are
  unprotected.

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What might propaganda be used for?

• For example, suppose that top foreign
  policymakers in the US wanted to put US troops
  all over Central Asia for imperialist ends.
  
• The most immediate task is to make certain that
  no state or combinations of states gains the
  capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia,
  or even to diminish significantly its decisive
  arbitrating role. Zbgniew Brzezinski (Carters
  National Security Advisor), writing in 1997

9
What might propaganda be used for?

• If US policy-makers said this
• We want to be imperialists and dominate the
  entire world, and to do that we need to put our
  troops all over Central Asia
  
• that might not work.
• Americans dont like to think of themselves as
  imperialists.

10
What might propaganda be used for?

• The people in charge of American foreign policy
  were well aware of that.
  
• the window of historical opportunitycould
  prove to be relatively brief, for both domestic
  and external reasons. A genuine populist
  democracy has never before attained international
  supremacy. The pursuit of power and especially
  the economic costs and human sacrifice that the
  exercise of such power often requires are not
  generally congenial to democratic instincts
  Zbgniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carters National
  Security Advisor) writing in 1997

11
Brzezinski (1997) cont.

• Public opinion polls suggest that only a small
  minority (13 percent) of Americans favor the
  proposition that as the sole remaining
  superpower, the US should continue to be the
  preeminent world leader in solving international
  problems. An overwhelming majority (74 percent)
  prefer that America do its fair share in efforts
  to solve international problems together with
  other countries.
• Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly
  multicultural society, it may find it more
  difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign
  policy issues, except in the circumstances of a
  truly massive and widely perceived direct
  external threat.

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In other words

• In order to support an imperialist adventure in
  Central Asia, Americans need to hear something
  more or less like the following There are nasty
  terrorists in Central Asia and they can strike
  massively at the heart of America
• Brzezinski was saying that you had to put the
  above meme in American heads before the US could
  to take over Central Asia.
  
• Did anything put that meme in Americans heads?
• Yes. 9-11 did.

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What is the ideal propaganda system?

• If people have prestige bias?
• Use experts
• People who are independent analysts of X or Y
  (when X or Y is being discussed).

14
Prestige Bias

• Here is one example
• ABC News intelligence analyst Vincent
  Cannistraro. Excerpt from Nightline, January
  15, 2002.
  
• Since he is introduced as an intelligence
  analyst, this tells you that he is an expert
  he knows his stuff.
  
• Often, they give his pedigree
• Vince Cannistraro, a former member of the CIA's
  clandestine service and one-time director of
  intelligence programs at the National Security
  Council. Associated Press, March 2, 1997.
• This makes you think Gee, whatever Cannistraro
  says about intelligence matters has got to be
  very informed prestige bias.

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• But who is Vincent Cannistraro, really?
• Cannistraro was a former CIA agent in Central
  America (a) where he was a member of the CIAs
  clandestine service (b). What is that? The
  Directorate of Operations, the agencys
  clandestine service..., manages the agencys
  counterterrorism center, espionage and
  paramilitary operations (c). So Cannistraro was
  training paramilitaries in Central America. Then
  he became Director of NSC National Security
  Council Intelligence from 1984 to 1987 (d)
  where he was responsible for coordinating
  intelligence programs throughout the Reagan
  administration (a). This is not a coincidence
  1984 is also when President Reagan transferred
  the Contra program from the CIA to the NSC after
  congressional authorization for the CIAs Contra
  program expired in mid 1984 (e).
• So, Vincent Cannistraro
• 1) helped the CIA turn ex-Nicaraguan dictator
  Anastasio Somozas thugs into the
  ultra-right-wing Contra terrorist force and
  then
• 2) he was brought over to direct the Contra
  program from his new perch at the National
  Security Council when Reagan moved it there.

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• Cannistraro was in the business of killing
  innocent civilians in Nicaragua.
  
• The entire Contra program, mind you, was illegal,
  and when these activities became public it turned
  into a huge scandal.
  
• (a) United Press International, June 15, 1987,
  Monday, AM cycle, Washington News, 519 words,
  Walsh draws testimony from NSC officials, By LORI
  SANTOS, WASHINGTON
• Vincent Cannistraro, 41, the NSC director for
  intelligence programs, appeared before the
  federal grand jury in the morning, following
  Fridays testimony by another former top NSC
  official -- Ray Burghardt, who served as special
  assistant to the president and senior director
  for Latin American affairs.
• Both men, once tapped by former national security
  adviser John Poindexter to take over Contra
  matters from North, left the NSC when Frank
  Carlucci took over Jan. 2 in the wake of the
  Iran-Contra scandal.
• Cannistraro, a former CIA agent in Central
  America, was assigned last summer to work with
  North on Contra affairs, and in his role of
  coordinating intelligence programs throughout the
  administration, he headed several inter-agency
  meetings on aid for the rebels.
• Contra sources have told United Press
  International they were introduced in the summer
  of 1986 by North to Cannistraro as someone they
  would be working with.
• Cannistraro declined to comment.
• (b) Vince Cannistraro, a former member of the
  CIA's clandestine service and one-time director
  of intelligence programs at the National Security
  Council. -- Associated Press, March 2, 1997,
  Sunday, AM cycle, Washington Dateline, 788 words,
  CIA cuts off more than 1,000 informants, many for
  criminality, By JOHN DIAMOND, Associated Press
  Writer, WASHINGTON
• (c) the Directorate of Operations, the agency's
  clandestine service, which manages the agency's
  counterterrorism center, espionage and
  paramilitary operations. -- The Washington Post,
  August 09, 2002, Friday, Final Edition, A
  SECTION Pg. A01, 2035 words, The Slowly
  Changing Face of the CIA Spy Recruits Eager to
  Fight Terror Are Flooding In, but Few Look the
  Part, Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer
• (d) Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to
  1987, Vincent Cannistraro went on to serve as
  chief of operations for the CIA's
  Counterterrorism Center and to lead the CIA's
  investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103...
  -- From a PBS interview that may be read here
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/targ
  et/interviews/
  
• (e) Kornbluh, P., and M. Byrne. 1993. The
  Iran-Contra Scandal The declassified history.
  New York The New Press. (p.xviii) President
  Reagan transferred the Contra program from the
  CIA to the NSC after congressional authorization
  for the CIAs Contra program expired in mid
  1984.
• (f) ABC News, World News Now (200 AM ET) - ABC,
  January 15, 2002 Tuesday, 1056 words, Excerpt
  from "Nightline" discusses the elusiveness and
  the possibilities of where Osama bin Laden might
  be, ALISON STEWART

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Prestige bias

• But when Cannistraro is introduced as ABC News
  intelligence analyst, ABC does not mention that
  this man has illegally murdered innocents for the
  US government. All they communicate to you is
  that the man is an expert.
• Smell good?
• A man who helped the Reagan administration
  deceive the American people, training and
  directing terrorists, is who explains to
  Americans, and to much of the world, through ABC
  News and other media, what is true and what is
  false in intelligence matters.
• How likely is it that he is telling us the truth?

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What is the ideal propaganda system?

• If people have conformity bias?
• Make sure that many apparently independent voices
  say the same thing.

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What is the ideal propaganda system?

• If people have a credibility bias?
• Make sure that people dont know that you control
  the independent voices.

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What is the ideal propaganda system?

• The ideal propaganda system. . .
• . . . is the free press!!!
• If you can corrupt the free press without people
  knowing this, youve won.
  
• Mmm.

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• the media in this country would make Goebbels
  Hitlers minister of propaganda blush with
  envy, becausehere its very sophisticatedly
  disguised in various fronts through the corporate
  media, which is owned by military-industrial
  corporations, and collaborates with the Central
  Intelligence Agency. National Public Radio is
  headed by the former head of all US and CIA
  propaganda broadcast, Kevin Klose. angry
  caller who phoned in to the NPR show All Things
  Considered
• I looked into the callers claim about NPR.
• Its true.

22

• One of the matters the NPR Board discussed before
  hiring current NPR President Kevin Klose how
  NPR's news staff would react to a boss who had
  worked in government radio and for the Radios,
  which were CIA-financed until the early 1970s.
  "There was a question as to how the NPR newsroom
  would receive Kevin Klose," says board member
  Chase Untermeyer, who headed Voice of America
  also a CIA operation - FGW during the Bush
  years. But those questions were "put aside"
  because of Klose's leadership abilities and other
  assets, he said. -- "Kevin Klose journalist,
  fan, NPR president Originally published in
  Current, Nov. 23, 1998 By Jacqueline Conciatore
  http//www.current.org/rad/rad821k.html

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What would be the evidence?

• The callers hypothesis the so-called free
  press is really controlled propaganda.
  
• Interesting hypothesis, but how can we test it?
• What would count as evidence?
• Well, to understand what would be a test, first
  we need to know what a free press predicts.

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What does a free market predict?

• Companies compete for consumers.
• They try to embarrass each other.
• By producing a better product than the
  competition.
  
• By showing the competition to be inferior.
• A free market predicts better products.
• If companies compete in a free auto market, then
  we dont expect
  
• that every company produces the same car!
• that all cars fail in exactly the same way!

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What counts as evidence that a market is not free?

• If we find evidence that all companies in a
  market are failing the consumer in exactly the
  same way, then we should suspect a hidden
  monopoly.
• This is true of markets in general, and the same
  goes for the information market.
  
• In the case of the Milosevic speech, we found
  that the entire media failed the consumers in
  exactly the same way.
  
• To find out who controls the monopoly, you ask
  the question who benefits?

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What does a free market predict?

• If, in the information market, we find
• identical failures across the board
• the mistakes all work to benefit the interests
  of the government elite
  
• then the monopoly must be...the government.

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The War on Yugoslavia

• On March 24, 1999, NATO bombed Serbia.
• They bombed refineries, tobacco factories, barns,
  convoys of refugees, the TV station with its
  personnel in it, civilian trains with their
  passengers in it, the Chinese embassy, etc...
• NATO attacked deliberately attacked civilians,
  which is a crime of war.
  
• Why?

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The War on Yugoslavia

• They didnt say to Americans Serbia is a
  nuisance to our imperial ends, so we are going to
  get rid of it.
  
• That meme would not have worked.
• Americans would not have supported war.
• So first they put a different meme in the heads
  of Americans.

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The War on Yugoslavia

• The memes they used were these
• Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, is a
  monster (the new Hitler, they said)
  
• The Serbs are violent racists (the new Nazis,
  they said)
  
• The Serbs are trying to commit genocide against
  innocent Albanians.
  
• Americans believed this for two reasons
• They dont know history (the Serbs are more
  anti-Nazi, and more tolerant, than Americans)
  
• And because the entire, mainstream, Western media
  said the above lies.

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