Totalitarian States and the Media: Propaganda and Control - Essay Example

?TOTALITARIAN S AND THE MEDIA: PROPAGANDA AND CONTROL In analyzing the use of propaganda by both totalitarian and liberal democratic s, thestructural aspects of mass-media communications, including the ownership of institutions such as newspapers, television stations, printing presses, and radio stations, as well as their editorial independence, must be compared to an ideal model of operations. In constructing the ideal, the degree of State control of media channels of communication and their content can be positioned on a scale from the absence of interference in operations by government to full editorial dictation by the State. Similar scalar models can be used to analyze the fairness of elections in a society, or the distribution of economic prosperity and the ownership of property, though active criticism is required to determine where lingering biases remain within the framework of interpretation. In this context, two views can be positioned in contrast. The first is the view of the civil libertarian, which posits the rights of the individual to be most important and subsequently seeks to maximize individual freedom and minimize State control of all activities pertaining to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In contrast to this are societal forces, fascist in their most extreme form, that seek organization to limit and control others as a form of governance, either for minority social, cultural, and economic interests or for personal gain, power, ego, and other self-motivating factors, often using organized political violence as a tool to further ideological ends. Control is opposed to liberty, but organization in this context is ironically more associated with the controlling aspects of power than freedom as historically conceived. Indeed, as societal structures such as those in the military and government agencies of superpower States grow to unprecedented technological and economic prowess, the absence of such agencies of control still exemplifies the libertarian approach. Within this duality is the traditional duel between Marxist critics and the apologists of Capitalism, with the “Western” ideal firmly based in the historical tradition of Greece and Rome, including both democracy and imperialism in the ideal Republic. In the context of critical theory and post-modernism, the historical approach can be used to deconstruct architectures of power to delineate types of State control through the analysis of media operations and propaganda techniques found both in totalitarian regimes and liberal democracies, to see what joins and differentiates the two approaches to government and media communications. The initial discussion of personal bias and political ideology when constructing an ideal by which to judge a process such as government communications or the proper end goals of society highlights that absolute objectivity or completely dispassionate review is not entirely possible in the context of political analysis, contrary to the appearance of historical fact. In order to judge and analyze the activities and processes involved in media operations of governments, there must be an a priori establishment of legitimacy and this inevitably involves a decision that introduces political bias into the argumentation. As such, the humanistic context of shared social and cultural values are assumed to be the base from which “true” judgment proceeds, as these are viewed as the best of historical values shared by diverse cultures across numerous countries in the course of the evolution of civilization, as well as those that are the most fair, egalitarian, and progressive for building the future of mass-society. Yet, at the very moment when these ideals are viewed as universal, critical inquiry based in Marxist philosophy particularly challenges whether these so-called Western ideals of supposed Greek and Roman origin are really truth as universal and divinely ordinate, or actually another form of propaganda masking the “true” power and control of the social system. The importance of this is that propaganda also attacks or makes a battleground of the discursive processes that are engaged in collectively to define and determine the “true” in society, and that in recognizing scales and hierarchies that interrelate between competing political value systems, one can see how even education, entertainment, and political values accepted by mass populations can still be viewed in the context of propaganda. In “Key Concepts in Political Communication,” Darren G. Lilleker writes: "At the heart of true propaganda are three key elements: rhetoric, myth, and symbolism. Propaganda tends to use all of these to talk to our base emotional impulses, the myth and symbolism of the British Empire of the German Reich are often used by far-right nationalist groups. Equally, we find the rhetoric of death and destruction, the distortion of facts and symbolic representations of nature central to the campaigns of environmentalist and anti-poverty organisations. Often it is common for us to condemn the messages we dislike, those of racist, misogynistic or terror groups, but allow the messages we support to permeate our subconsciousness. Therefore we need to identify the use of rhetoric, symbolism, and myth within communications such as party press releases, before we decide that they are acting as propagandists." (Lilleker, 2006, p.163) One advantage of Lilleker’s definition of propaganda is that it can be applied equally to analyze both totalitarian States and liberal democracies for the common use of methods of control, especially related to communication and governance. Yet, if one uses this methodology to examine propaganda in the Soviet Union, the use of archaic myth is minimized in comparison. The Soviet propaganda tended to depict a futuristic society and the utilitarian perspective of proletariat science, without the overt appeal to the symbolism of religion or medieval Russia. This can be understood in the way that Marxism as an external import functioned in a manner similar to mythology in the culture. The Soviets, live the Nazis in Germany, maintained the old symbols of power in architecture by seizing the major institutions of governance, occupying and controlling them. Similarly, the manner in which the United States used Greek and Roman referencing in the construction of the Capital and its banking & legal institutions reflects this mythological aspect of propaganda as well. In the same manner, references to the ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle and their schools of philosophy as a base can be either sincere or duplicitous if it is used merely as empty trappings for symbolism. This is known as the appropriation of symbols from another culture or tradition to strengthen one’s own authority. In “Politics and Propaganda: Weapons of Mass Seduction” Nicholas J. O'Shaughnessy writes: "We define 'Symbolic Government' as government where the creation of symbolic images, symbolic actions and celebratory rhetoric have become a principal concern. Appearances do not just matter. They are the main part of its business. Symbolic Government is an entirely new kind of government. This is not to say that previous regimes did not engage in it frequently - but what was just an important tool of government has now graduated into becoming its central organising principle..." (O'Shaughnessy, 2004, pp. 172-173) Therefore, to understand the use of propaganda by governments, it is more important to look at the era of history that the regime occurred in and the technology that it had access to rather than become overly concerned with the purported modality of government, be it democratic or totalitarian. For as modern critics have increasingly noted, there are overt and historical tendencies to totalitarianism within the liberal democratic tradition itself, and the recognition of bias within the system is discouraged. This is noted by Edward S. Herman, who discusses how the corporate media in Western democracies are unwilling to include to propaganda critique within their field of discussion. The nature of mass-media, and the capital involved to develop and implement it across superpower and other modern States leads to a situation where the instruments of mass-communication and culture are either owned by private companies and individuals, as in the Capitalist system and the political-business regimes of Berlusconi and Bloomberg, or the State-owned Socialist model more identified with totalitarian systems historically. During the Cold War, it may have been difficult to find a teacher in the United States who could be employed while teaching the view that the Soviet experiment or Communism was a benevolent and useful philosophy and social governance vehicle. This is a type of structural censorship that can have deep and long-lasting effects in determining the discourse in a society and shows some of the ways that education can be abused to become a form of programming for patriotism rather than a venue for promoting a search for the truth or freedom of inquiry. That these techniques associated with totalitarianism are masked by propaganda techniques is a central tenet of modern critics like Herman and Chomsky who deconstruct the Western liberal democracies and their systems of control. Edward S. Herman writes in 'The Propaganda Model': "What is the propaganda model and how does it work? Its crucial structural factors derive from the fact that the dominant media are firmly embedded in the market system. They are profit-seeking businesses, owned by very wealthy people (or other companies); and they are funded largely by advertisers who are also profit-seeking entities, and who want their advertisements to appear in a supportive selling environment. The media also lean heavily on government and major business firms as information sources, and both efficiency and political considerations and, frequently, overlapping interests, cause a certain degree of solidarity to prevail among the government, major media and other corporate businesses." (Herman, 2002, p. 62) It is clear that the critique offered by Herman and Chomsky is distinct in targeting the singular aspects of Western Capitalism and mass-media as they relate to governance, based on an ideal of justice in the civil libertarian tradition. What this illustrates is the vast difference between systems of control in totalitarian and liberal-democratic societies despite the sharing of technological and operational methods of operation. Both totalitarian and democratic regimes may employ what is known as “white, black, and grey” propaganda techniques to deceive the public to further control methods. According to the U.S. Army’s war manual “Psychological Warfare”: “White propaganda is issued from an acknowledged source... This type of propaganda is associated with overt psychological operations.” “Grey propaganda does not clearly identify any source.” “Black propaganda purports to emanate from a source other than the true one. This type of propaganda is associated with covert psychological operations.” (Linebarger, 1954, p. 44) Example of black propaganda are found particularly in military campaigns such as WWII, when the Germans and British both engaged in disinformation campaigns by building false radio stations that operated as if they were actually independently associated with the other side. This type of propaganda, if it goes undetected, can be the source for building false facts and Trojan horses into the local populace to lead them towards destructive or deadly ends. It can also sow confusion and disorder in a community. Modern forms of this are generally top secret, yet black propaganda may still be the source of many contemporary news stories after being subject to the dissection of future historians. White propaganda might be made similar to “white lies,” spin or misinformation, small-half truths and lies inserted into the political discourse in a way intended to lead interest and discussion in other areas. O'Shaughnessy has suggested that the Blair administration in the United Kingdom was dominated by this form of white propaganda, as it was completely dedicated to the production of spin events rather than traditional governance. (O'Shaughnessy, 2004, p. 172) Grey Propaganda might form the background of public communications in Soviet Russia or advertising in the West; it efficacy lies in the secrecy of the source of the disinformation. Taking control, political, psychological, and economic primarily, as the goal of propaganda, it can be seen as the misuse of both power and modern communication devices to further the ends of a minority interest that could not succeed or advance as sufficiently through employing other means. The effects on a victim of propaganda can be viewed as severe, as they can limit the total expression or understanding of life. Yet, in building a theory that understands and explains the way that government entities use mass-communications to control populations or to sculpt discourse in a way that is favorable to ruling elites or economic minorities, it is important that the elements be applied equally across systems of government and not with overt political bias. To avoid this bias is not possible entirely, yet it is in the dimensions and construction of the bias itself that propaganda finds its most fertile battleground. Defense and de-programming techniques for propaganda have been little explored, for as Herman and Chomsky write, the perpetrators of the propaganda system will inevitably discourage any real discourse or inquiry into the mechanisms behind the masks of power. Government secrecy means that contemporary historians may never have the complete information to make valid judgments on historical events due to the disinformation aspects of propaganda, and this translates into the way history is taught around the world. Education as a form of propaganda is opposed to education as a means of liberation from propaganda, and it is in the bias of the civil libertarians that the defense of truth against the totalitarian is most active. The Nazi and Soviet use of cinema as a propaganda tool must be viewed with critical analysis under the same lens that the media produced by Hollywood or Bollywood is today. That mass-media communication is used as a major tool for the construction of what humans agree to be consensually real or true is problematic when the ownership of the means of production and distribution are in the control of malignant minority interests, but it is not easy to distinguish the details of the systematic programming when the cultural veil is drawn. For this reason, the use of rhetoric, mythology, and symbolism as a basis for cross-cultural study of propaganda is advantaged in that it can be applied equally to both totalitarian and liberal democratic systems of government, as well as both Marxist and Capitalist regimes. Sources Cited: Herman, Edward [Edited by: McQuail, Denis] (2002), The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective, Chapter 4 of McQuail's Reader in Mass Communication Theory, SAGE, 2002. Web, Accessed 2 April 2011, . Herman, Edward and Chomsky, Noam (1988), Manufacturing Consent: A Propaganda Model, Pantheon Books, 1988. Web, Accessed 2 April 2011, . Lilleker, Darren G. (2006), Key concepts in political communication, SAGE, 2006. Web, Accessed 2 April 2011, . Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony (1954), Psychological Warfare, Combat Forces Press, Washington, 1954. Web, Accessed 2 April 2011, . O'Shaughnessy, Nicholas J. (2004), Politics and propaganda: weapons of mass seduction, Manchester University Press, 2004. Web, Accessed 2 April 2011, . Taylor, Richard (1998), Film propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, I.B.Tauris, 1998. Web, Accessed 2 April 2011, . Welch, David (2001), Propaganda and the German cinema, 1933-1945, I.B.Tauris, 2001. Web, Accessed 2 April 2011, . Read More