Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GLOBAL 'WAR' ON TERROR (GWOT) Years 1 and 2, ie 9/11-2003
We Need More Propaganda, Not Less by Nancy Snow 
We Need More Propaganda, Not Less By Nancy Snow Like the Cold War, the Terror Age is being fought primarily through Information Wars. Capture and control of the public mind is nothing to fear if we understand that propaganda is a neutral concept. It refers to any systematic process of mass persuasion; it's often misunderstood as censorship or lying (although that does manifest too). Most mainstream news media cover the Information Wars like a World Wrestling Federation competition--in this corner, Bush rhetoric: "Ultimately, one of the best weapons, one of the truest weapons that we have against terrorism is to show the world the true strength of our character and kindness of the American people." In the other corner, bin Laden rhetoric: "The call to wage war against America was made because America has spearheaded the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control." (Gee, bin Laden, tell us what you really think.) Governments and stateless leaders have always used propaganda campaigns to wield their centralized control of message management at the expense of those who cannot. This is nothing new. The problem with focusing a spotlight on official sources of information is that we end up parsing words. What's the secret hidden message Bin Laden is sending to his cells? What will Bush say next? Our minds shut down from our own independent and critical thinking. We become caught up in the spectacle and distracted from the mundane facts. We end up as spectators, just like those fans at WWF ringside. We tune in to CNN, MSNBC or Fox News for the latest Breaking News. Our bandwidth of context is narrowed by media companies that bring "us" to "them" through their advertising persuaders. Let's broaden the propaganda landscape. Did September 11 end the march toward deregulation and private concentration of global media? No, official sponsored information is more centralized than ever and will continue to be squeezed into narrower channels. That's why we - the rest of us, the Chief Agitation Officers of our own e-zines and Independent Media Centers - need more propaganda, not less. We need more attempts by global citizens to arouse world opinion to the "product" of peaceful coexistence. We need more attempts by citizen agitators who, like their corporate globalization activist sisters and brothers, are trying to wake up the world to power concentration. The New York Times observed in an editorial on September 1, 1937, "What is truly vicious is not propaganda but a monopoly of it." At that time there was no television, Internet, Instant Messaging, e-mail or cell phones. World public opinion was concerned with total control of information by government dictatorships. Today we might want to be concerned about a monopoly of official sources for news. Read a daily newspaper or watch your local news. How often do you see a private citizen quoted or interviewed? A member of a nongovernmental organization or neighborhood association? Someone not based in an elite institution of higher learning, the private sector, or government? Officialese is more prominent now than ever in the post-Sept. 11 era. The global elite media are in a difficult spot. They face challenges as to whether or not to air enemy videotapes and what information to hold back about military efforts. While it's not going to get any easier for these media in their decision-making, we viewers, we readers, need to hold these media accountable by demanding our right to hear viewpoints and perspectives from across the public opinion spectrum. One way we can do that is by using the power that we have as media consumers and producers to build independent media coalitions. Our right to communicate is as sacred as any Pledge of Allegiance. We need to express our differences of opinion on how our governments are responding to threats and terror. Right now the war propagandists are dominating the media landscape. This should come as no surprise because war is an efficient means of carving up centralized zones of power - the power to control, the power to dominate, both through message and force. "In a nuclear age," writes British author Philip Taylor in "Munitions of the Mind," "we need peace propagandists, not war propagandists - people whose job it is to increase communication, understanding and dialogue between different peoples with different beliefs." This is a call to arms - to arm ourselves with knowledge, content and context generated from open and diverse channels of communication. White House news conferences and CNN should not be watched in a vacuum separated from the world's people. If so, then the world belongs to the war propagandists. Nancy Snow (nsnow@ucla.edu), author of "Propaganda, Inc.", is a MediaChannel North American adviser. |