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Propaganda

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On March 24, 1999, NATO bombed Serbia. ... They didn't say to Americans: 'Serbia is a nuisance to our imperial ends, so we ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Propaganda


1
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.

3
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.

5
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.

6
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.

7
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.

8
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.

12
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.

13
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.

15
  • 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.

16
  • 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

17
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?

18
What is the ideal propaganda system?
  • If people have conformity bias?
  • Make sure that many apparently independent voices
    say the same thing.

19
What is the ideal propaganda system?
  • If people have a credibility bias?
  • Make sure that people dont know that you control
    the independent voices.

20
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.

21
  • 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

23
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.

24
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!

25
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?

26
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.

27
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?

28
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.

29
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.

30
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