Propaganda is never better than when one ascribes an opponent with a label that is guaranteed to demonize them, isolate their support, and most importantly extinguish any rational analysis of their vi
June 23, 2005 (Press Release) --
Propaganda is never better than when one ascribes an opponent with a label that is guaranteed to demonize them, isolate their support, and most importantly extinguish any rational analysis of their viewpoint. When such practices are conducted at the national and geopolitical level, it is not only a very powerful weapon, but also an extremely dangerous one.
There is nothing new about the use of labels and self-serving designations. Voltaire described The Holy Roman Empire as being “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. In fact, it was German. It was so named in order to capture the glory of the Caesars and the moral authority of the Papacy.
Hitler used the sobriquet National Socialist Workers Party to define the ghastly construct we commonly refer to as the Nazi Party.
Communist regimes specialized in the construction of fabulous new names for their countries using words such as People’s, Democratic, and Republic – and of course being anything but. East Germany was called The German Democratic Republic. Despite the misery and the millions starved to death, Mao’s China was officially known as The People’s Republic of China – that is still the country’s formal name.
Perhaps the most twisted example of this, an act designed to tempt even angels into retribution, was when the genocidal Pol Pot renamed Cambodia, The People’s Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. That was before he emptied its cities of their inhabitants and placed them in killing fields where over 2 million people or a quarter of the population met their end.
Of course, because of examples such as these, if you were unfortunate enough to be called a Communist or a Communist sympathizer, whether true or not, it was more than enough to place a permanent blight on your livelihood if not your life.
To a slightly lesser extent, the same could be said of being labeled a Socialist, and I mean in the more orthodox leftist, rather than the more obtuse Nazi sense of the word. Take the example of Justice Janice Rogers Brown whose nomination to a federal appeals court was held up by the US Senate for two years. The reason is outlined in this extract from the New York Times on June 7, 2005:
They said her writings and speeches had demonstrated that she was not qualified for a seat on the appeals court. "She calls the Supreme Court decisions upholding the New Deal protections like the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek the triumph of our own socialist revolution," said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.
In the US, being called a Socialist is worse than a kiss of death, as some will fight to rid even a dead President, in this case Roosevelt who introduced the New Deal, of the dreaded label.
Call someone a terrorist and immediately the mind conjures up images of an insanely wicked and vindictive person, most likely Muslim, who wants to blow up people for his own selfish reasons. That is how we have been programmed. The idea that while we may disagree with a person’s methods we should at least try to understand their underlying motives simply escapes most people. It has not even occurred to them that maybe these people don’t blow themselves up as a form of recreation.
The words Muslim and terrorist have become so ingrained that most don’t realize that the world’s greatest and deadliest of purveyors of this art are the Tamil Tigers; Hindus, who by the way are not religiously motivated, but who are seeking a separatist state in Sri Lanka.
In the US alone, there are over 30,000 suicides annually – it is the eighth leading cause of death in that country. The corresponding number in the UK is approximately 9,000. In many of these instances, others, often members of the perpetrators own family, are taken on the terminal journey without their permission.
Some labels are designed to dull the senses, erase reasoning, and suspend reality.
What if you were living in Iraq and an American bomb hit your house, killing most of your extended family. Just suppose you were the lone survivor and despite your overwhelming grief, you subsequently gained access to CNN, just in time to hear the news bulletin of the attack. What would you think on hearing the American military spokesperson describe the elimination of your family as ‘Collateral Damage’?
Would it make your grief any less than it would have been if your family was killed by someone with several pounds of explosive strapped to their body?
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan armed the Mujahaddeen, including Osama bin Laden, to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; he labeled them freedom fighters and holy warriors. Today, Bush calls these same people and their Iraqi counterparts terrorists and insurgents.
What’s the difference?
They appear to be as least as holy now as they were then.
Ironically, I am reminded of one of Christianity’s most popular hymns, one I used to sing with great gusto at both church and school:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
forward into battle see his banners go!
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus going on before.
It is probably a very popular in the crusading White House! However, given the recent problems with religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy and its fervent promotion of Evangelical Christianity amongst its recruits, it is probably not that funny.
Assigning labels and making them stick is the easiest way to demonize an opponent and invalidate their concerns.
They are Jews but we are Arabs.
They are Muslim but we are Christians.
They are liberals but we are conservatives.
They are terrorists but we have an army.
They kill people but we only commit Collateral Damage.
They are fanatical but we are godly.
They are extremists but we are fundamentalists.
They believe in free markets but we believe in Europe.
The art of Socratic debate is being largely replaced by a poisoned exchange of closed minds; each locked in its own political, social and cultural vacuum. It shows that for all the knowledge we claim to have in a connected world, most are unable to comprehend beyond the narrow confines of their own identity. People, businesses, and governments all confuse computers with knowledge.
Yes, this is dangerous, and it is particularly dangerous when nuclear weapons are involved.
Bush has described North Korea as part of an axis of evil and bombarded us with a cacophony of labels. North Korea is an “outpost of tyranny”. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is “a tyrant and a dangerous person”. Bush says he loathes Kim. The US media acting as cheerleaders have echoed this refrain, branding Kim as Dr Evil and parading headlines such as; Kim Jong Il; How Evil is He?
North Korea has even been described as a threat to US national security, although it is almost half a world away. What is worse is the fact that people actually buy into that absurdity.
The truth is that the people most at risk from North Korea’s nuclear weapons are the South Koreans. The following extract from the online edition of World Press Review tells us precisely what they think of US propaganda policies.
The majority of South Koreans would be pleased to see Bush back away from his inflammatory labeling of their northern neighbor. According to a recent opinion poll conducted by The Korea Times, more than half of those surveyed (56.4 percent) said that Bush’s remarks about North Korea were “inappropriate.” When asked who is responsible for escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula, 37.8 percent placed the blame on the Bush administration; 30.8 percent said the onus was on Kim Jong Il.
Donald Gregg, former US Ambassador to South Korea, and journalist Don Oberdorfer, writing in the US press, provided details of an offer made by North Korea early in the Bush Administration. If the US recognized their sovereignty and provided assurances that their country would not be invaded, then they would make a positive move on nuclear weapons. Oberdorfer and Gregg noted that the Bush Administration not only rebuffed the overture, they upped the vitriol in their rhetoric, and then proceeded with the Iraqi invasion.
North Korea, or should we say the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is not a nice place to live. More precisely, it is one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Does that entitle anyone to lie about their actions and motives?
Is it even necessary?
What does it say about the motives of those who do?
Assigning nasty labels to the North Koreans, and to be fair they have given as good as they have got, may appease and blind many to the realities of the situation, but it is a highly dangerous and irresponsible way for a superpower to behave.
JonathanLedwidge is the author of the book A Mannequin for President - www.amannequinforpresident.com
There is nothing new about the use of labels and self-serving designations. Voltaire described The Holy Roman Empire as being “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. In fact, it was German. It was so named in order to capture the glory of the Caesars and the moral authority of the Papacy.
Hitler used the sobriquet National Socialist Workers Party to define the ghastly construct we commonly refer to as the Nazi Party.
Communist regimes specialized in the construction of fabulous new names for their countries using words such as People’s, Democratic, and Republic – and of course being anything but. East Germany was called The German Democratic Republic. Despite the misery and the millions starved to death, Mao’s China was officially known as The People’s Republic of China – that is still the country’s formal name.
Perhaps the most twisted example of this, an act designed to tempt even angels into retribution, was when the genocidal Pol Pot renamed Cambodia, The People’s Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. That was before he emptied its cities of their inhabitants and placed them in killing fields where over 2 million people or a quarter of the population met their end.
Of course, because of examples such as these, if you were unfortunate enough to be called a Communist or a Communist sympathizer, whether true or not, it was more than enough to place a permanent blight on your livelihood if not your life.
To a slightly lesser extent, the same could be said of being labeled a Socialist, and I mean in the more orthodox leftist, rather than the more obtuse Nazi sense of the word. Take the example of Justice Janice Rogers Brown whose nomination to a federal appeals court was held up by the US Senate for two years. The reason is outlined in this extract from the New York Times on June 7, 2005:
They said her writings and speeches had demonstrated that she was not qualified for a seat on the appeals court. "She calls the Supreme Court decisions upholding the New Deal protections like the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek the triumph of our own socialist revolution," said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.
In the US, being called a Socialist is worse than a kiss of death, as some will fight to rid even a dead President, in this case Roosevelt who introduced the New Deal, of the dreaded label.
Call someone a terrorist and immediately the mind conjures up images of an insanely wicked and vindictive person, most likely Muslim, who wants to blow up people for his own selfish reasons. That is how we have been programmed. The idea that while we may disagree with a person’s methods we should at least try to understand their underlying motives simply escapes most people. It has not even occurred to them that maybe these people don’t blow themselves up as a form of recreation.
The words Muslim and terrorist have become so ingrained that most don’t realize that the world’s greatest and deadliest of purveyors of this art are the Tamil Tigers; Hindus, who by the way are not religiously motivated, but who are seeking a separatist state in Sri Lanka.
In the US alone, there are over 30,000 suicides annually – it is the eighth leading cause of death in that country. The corresponding number in the UK is approximately 9,000. In many of these instances, others, often members of the perpetrators own family, are taken on the terminal journey without their permission.
Some labels are designed to dull the senses, erase reasoning, and suspend reality.
What if you were living in Iraq and an American bomb hit your house, killing most of your extended family. Just suppose you were the lone survivor and despite your overwhelming grief, you subsequently gained access to CNN, just in time to hear the news bulletin of the attack. What would you think on hearing the American military spokesperson describe the elimination of your family as ‘Collateral Damage’?
Would it make your grief any less than it would have been if your family was killed by someone with several pounds of explosive strapped to their body?
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan armed the Mujahaddeen, including Osama bin Laden, to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; he labeled them freedom fighters and holy warriors. Today, Bush calls these same people and their Iraqi counterparts terrorists and insurgents.
What’s the difference?
They appear to be as least as holy now as they were then.
Ironically, I am reminded of one of Christianity’s most popular hymns, one I used to sing with great gusto at both church and school:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
forward into battle see his banners go!
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus going on before.
It is probably a very popular in the crusading White House! However, given the recent problems with religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy and its fervent promotion of Evangelical Christianity amongst its recruits, it is probably not that funny.
Assigning labels and making them stick is the easiest way to demonize an opponent and invalidate their concerns.
They are Jews but we are Arabs.
They are Muslim but we are Christians.
They are liberals but we are conservatives.
They are terrorists but we have an army.
They kill people but we only commit Collateral Damage.
They are fanatical but we are godly.
They are extremists but we are fundamentalists.
They believe in free markets but we believe in Europe.
The art of Socratic debate is being largely replaced by a poisoned exchange of closed minds; each locked in its own political, social and cultural vacuum. It shows that for all the knowledge we claim to have in a connected world, most are unable to comprehend beyond the narrow confines of their own identity. People, businesses, and governments all confuse computers with knowledge.
Yes, this is dangerous, and it is particularly dangerous when nuclear weapons are involved.
Bush has described North Korea as part of an axis of evil and bombarded us with a cacophony of labels. North Korea is an “outpost of tyranny”. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is “a tyrant and a dangerous person”. Bush says he loathes Kim. The US media acting as cheerleaders have echoed this refrain, branding Kim as Dr Evil and parading headlines such as; Kim Jong Il; How Evil is He?
North Korea has even been described as a threat to US national security, although it is almost half a world away. What is worse is the fact that people actually buy into that absurdity.
The truth is that the people most at risk from North Korea’s nuclear weapons are the South Koreans. The following extract from the online edition of World Press Review tells us precisely what they think of US propaganda policies.
The majority of South Koreans would be pleased to see Bush back away from his inflammatory labeling of their northern neighbor. According to a recent opinion poll conducted by The Korea Times, more than half of those surveyed (56.4 percent) said that Bush’s remarks about North Korea were “inappropriate.” When asked who is responsible for escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula, 37.8 percent placed the blame on the Bush administration; 30.8 percent said the onus was on Kim Jong Il.
Donald Gregg, former US Ambassador to South Korea, and journalist Don Oberdorfer, writing in the US press, provided details of an offer made by North Korea early in the Bush Administration. If the US recognized their sovereignty and provided assurances that their country would not be invaded, then they would make a positive move on nuclear weapons. Oberdorfer and Gregg noted that the Bush Administration not only rebuffed the overture, they upped the vitriol in their rhetoric, and then proceeded with the Iraqi invasion.
North Korea, or should we say the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is not a nice place to live. More precisely, it is one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Does that entitle anyone to lie about their actions and motives?
Is it even necessary?
What does it say about the motives of those who do?
Assigning nasty labels to the North Koreans, and to be fair they have given as good as they have got, may appease and blind many to the realities of the situation, but it is a highly dangerous and irresponsible way for a superpower to behave.
JonathanLedwidge is the author of the book A Mannequin for President - www.amannequinforpresident.com
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