It's always someone else who does the propaganda
The AfD makes propaganda against migrants, Putin looks for excuses for his war in propaganda,
Trump makes propaganda against everything and everyone - so far, so good, so right.
But also so incomplete, because:
Can it really be that only the bad guys make propaganda?
By Bent-Erik Scholz
Trump makes propaganda against everything and everyone - so far, so good, so right.
But also so incomplete, because:
Can it really be that only the bad guys make propaganda?
By Bent-Erik Scholz
Propaganda, that sounds so unpleasantly like Goebbels and Stalin, the term has been colored - which is ironic in a certain way, because the term "propaganda" itself becomes the object of propaganda. The inventor of modern propaganda already knew this Psychologist Edward Bernays, and therefore invented a new, more innocuous name for his idea: Public Relations. And since Bernays was a master of his craft, he also knew how to market this idea well, so he spread the thesis that his theories had served as inspiration for Goebbels Historically controversial to the point of improbable, but sounds great, right?
Bernays is the brains behind various advertising campaigns. For example, he was tasked with increasing cigarette sales in the United States by targeting a new audience: women. He tried the trick of making the cigarette a symbol of emancipation, the "torch of freedom", because he was of the opinion that smoking was so taboo among women because cigarettes, as a sign of male dominance, triggered a kind of penis envy The success of this campaign cannot be proven - there is evidence that speaks against its effectiveness. But Edward Bernays used this anecdote to create his own myth, and it is still recited today. So the desired success for the US tobacco producers may not have materialized, But the creator's reputation grew, so much so that almost three decades later he was commissioned to develop a campaign against smoking: meta-propaganda.
The world of advertising is dripping with examples of the effects of propaganda - and of course these effects soon bled into politics. In the 1950s, Bernays was instrumental in deposing the then President of Guatemala, the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, because he planned to expropriate thousands of hectares of agricultural land from an American fruit company that operated banana plantations there with significant tax breaks. The land was to be transferred to small farmers. With the help of specially founded agencies and concerted press trips, Bernays staged a flawless disinformation campaign, which of course - it was the fifties after all - also fueled American fear of evil Soviet communism. In 1954, Arbenz was deposed after a coup organized by the CIA.
As a direct result, Guatemala became a military dictatorship, led by a henchman of the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita, which successfully avoided expropriation. It is not the only story of a dictator installed by the USA who subjugated his people in the interests of the fruit companies. The term "banana republic" is no coincidence.
When we talk about propaganda today, we usually do so in relation to populists, demagogues or autocrats. We know the Kremlin propaganda, we know about the diffuse campaigns surrounding Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US President. But if we consider that public relations is nothing other than a synonym for propaganda, we have to realize that the noble principle of "saying what is," which still adorns the SPIEGEL premises in Hamburg today, is long a thing of the past Alternative facts are also breaking out in the political camps that are closer to us than the enraptured billionaire or the Russian tyrant.
Social media has ushered in a new era of manipulation: rarely has it been so easy to falsify evidence, change statements retroactively, or - quite simply - create the feeling that a certain view is held by a large number of users However, it is not uncommon for them to be bots.
I recently published my podcast "The Good Society". In the second edition I interviewed an actress who is still limited in her job and in her everyday life due to the side effects of the corona vaccination. The interview was barely published when Messages reached me - privately and publicly - in which my guest was denied her illness. The hashtag #PostVacFake appeared, and I was sometimes accused of offering a platform to an impostor who served as a poster girl for the "anti-vaccination activists" in order to receive donations collect.
The method is perfidious but well-known: repeat a lie often enough until something sticks. The people you reach with it gratefully accept the supposed information. But what is more likely? That some anonymous Twitter user from a distance has complete insight into the illness of a public figure, and that consequently not only me, but also the ZDF, the MDR, the Berliner Zeitung and the Berliner Morgenpost - that we have all been duped let go of the "model patient"? Or is it more likely that all of these media outlets, including me, have evidence that we are dealing with a serious problem here, and we are only reporting on it because we have no doubts about it But does our doubtlessness matter at all if there is a camp in the public discourse that has already decided one way or another?
This is how propaganda works in its purest form. It delivers a pithy narrative that reveals to its recipient the comfort of not having to be convinced of the opposite. And she also includes the terminology to make it easier for the audience to find their own formulations. I recently read a post on Anyone who doesn't recognize the tough Nazi rhetoric in this is most likely blinded by their own beliefs.
We know plenty of similar pithy sayings: "We are not the social welfare office in the world" is a better-known example that was used by both the NPD and later the AfD. But these are obvious cases that are easily recognizable. More complicated It will be if we look at those who actually made active politics in the last two decades. If we look at the Iraq War in 2003, it is now generally accepted that this military operation was initiated on flimsy grounds. Today we know how foolish the talk is was that our security would be defended in the Hindu Kush.
We must apply exactly the same standards in the immediate present. We have to learn to recognize when someone is trying to convince us of their cause at all costs. When Ursula von der Leyen announces that our Western values are being defended in Ukraine, we have to stop and ask ourselves: Is that true? What values are these specifically? And if our values were so valued in Ukraine, why were applications for EU membership always rejected before the war? If values are so important, why do we make deals with countries like Saudi Arabia? Is it even necessary that the victim of a war of aggression has to defend our values so that we are interested in them? Isn't it enough for a state to use its right to self-defense?
When Karl Lauterbach tells us that a vaccine is "more or less free of side effects", then we have to realize that only shamans, herbal witches or faith healers talk like that, but not serious health politicians. We have to realize that it is completely illusory or even impossible a vaccine could be free of side effects. No vaccine manufacturer would ever claim that their product had "more or less" no side effects. One look at the aspirin package insert is enough to make a mockery of this formulation. Today you hear from people who regurgitated such theories at the time, saying that no one ever claimed that there were no side effects; it was clear that there would always be some damage. Firstly, this statement is usually made in a context of relativization, in which those who have actually been harmed are denied the suffering - according to the motto "It's stupid, but there's always a bit of loss" - and secondly, it's not true. What does "more or" actually mean? less" side effects? The claim of complete freedom from side effects leaves little room for contingencies - they exist or they don't. A dress is no more or less blue.
Why is the war in Ukraine often referred to as "Putin's War" in the media landscape in this country? Was the Iraq War at the beginning of the millennium called "Bush's War" at the time? Since when do we transfer ownership of wars? Who owns the Afghan war? Who cares about the war in Syria?
Why do so many politicians say that they cannot negotiate with Putin because he is a criminal? Only to then negotiate with other heads of state who trample on human rights in the same way? So at some point national or economic interests seem to outweigh freedom and Western values - where exactly is that point? Isn't a US president who made drone warfare boom, joked about his talent for killing and succinctly explained the human rights violations in Guantanamo with the words "We tortured some folks" also a criminal? Not after all. He's even a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
The greatest trick of modern propaganda is that it pretends that the counter-speech is the actual propaganda. As if people who generally rejected compulsory vaccination or the corona vaccination were questionable advocates of a dark ideology - as if the opponents of arms deliveries to Ukraine were useful idiots of an unleashed dictator. Or as if any form of resistance to the specifically spoken word "hate and agitation" is - just note how inflationary and in what contexts this phrase, "hate and agitation", is now being recited. It is the killing argument of a political caste that only believes its own approach is right. She uses "democratic" as a synonym for "right" because that sounds less invasive - nothing beats a good synonym in propaganda, for which the synonym "public relations" is used. So: the "right" thing. is always the "democratic" thing, regardless of whether that is always true in the individual case. Everything that is against it is accordingly "anti-democratic". With this in mind, please first look at the planned "Democracy Promotion Act" and then at the AfD's poll numbers.
The picture of the future that emerges from this speaks for itself.
02/26/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
Bernays is the brains behind various advertising campaigns. For example, he was tasked with increasing cigarette sales in the United States by targeting a new audience: women. He tried the trick of making the cigarette a symbol of emancipation, the "torch of freedom", because he was of the opinion that smoking was so taboo among women because cigarettes, as a sign of male dominance, triggered a kind of penis envy The success of this campaign cannot be proven - there is evidence that speaks against its effectiveness. But Edward Bernays used this anecdote to create his own myth, and it is still recited today. So the desired success for the US tobacco producers may not have materialized, But the creator's reputation grew, so much so that almost three decades later he was commissioned to develop a campaign against smoking: meta-propaganda.
The world of advertising is dripping with examples of the effects of propaganda - and of course these effects soon bled into politics. In the 1950s, Bernays was instrumental in deposing the then President of Guatemala, the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, because he planned to expropriate thousands of hectares of agricultural land from an American fruit company that operated banana plantations there with significant tax breaks. The land was to be transferred to small farmers. With the help of specially founded agencies and concerted press trips, Bernays staged a flawless disinformation campaign, which of course - it was the fifties after all - also fueled American fear of evil Soviet communism. In 1954, Arbenz was deposed after a coup organized by the CIA.
As a direct result, Guatemala became a military dictatorship, led by a henchman of the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita, which successfully avoided expropriation. It is not the only story of a dictator installed by the USA who subjugated his people in the interests of the fruit companies. The term "banana republic" is no coincidence.
When we talk about propaganda today, we usually do so in relation to populists, demagogues or autocrats. We know the Kremlin propaganda, we know about the diffuse campaigns surrounding Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US President. But if we consider that public relations is nothing other than a synonym for propaganda, we have to realize that the noble principle of "saying what is," which still adorns the SPIEGEL premises in Hamburg today, is long a thing of the past Alternative facts are also breaking out in the political camps that are closer to us than the enraptured billionaire or the Russian tyrant.
Social media has ushered in a new era of manipulation: rarely has it been so easy to falsify evidence, change statements retroactively, or - quite simply - create the feeling that a certain view is held by a large number of users However, it is not uncommon for them to be bots.
I recently published my podcast "The Good Society". In the second edition I interviewed an actress who is still limited in her job and in her everyday life due to the side effects of the corona vaccination. The interview was barely published when Messages reached me - privately and publicly - in which my guest was denied her illness. The hashtag #PostVacFake appeared, and I was sometimes accused of offering a platform to an impostor who served as a poster girl for the "anti-vaccination activists" in order to receive donations collect.
The method is perfidious but well-known: repeat a lie often enough until something sticks. The people you reach with it gratefully accept the supposed information. But what is more likely? That some anonymous Twitter user from a distance has complete insight into the illness of a public figure, and that consequently not only me, but also the ZDF, the MDR, the Berliner Zeitung and the Berliner Morgenpost - that we have all been duped let go of the "model patient"? Or is it more likely that all of these media outlets, including me, have evidence that we are dealing with a serious problem here, and we are only reporting on it because we have no doubts about it But does our doubtlessness matter at all if there is a camp in the public discourse that has already decided one way or another?
This is how propaganda works in its purest form. It delivers a pithy narrative that reveals to its recipient the comfort of not having to be convinced of the opposite. And she also includes the terminology to make it easier for the audience to find their own formulations. I recently read a post on Anyone who doesn't recognize the tough Nazi rhetoric in this is most likely blinded by their own beliefs.
We know plenty of similar pithy sayings: "We are not the social welfare office in the world" is a better-known example that was used by both the NPD and later the AfD. But these are obvious cases that are easily recognizable. More complicated It will be if we look at those who actually made active politics in the last two decades. If we look at the Iraq War in 2003, it is now generally accepted that this military operation was initiated on flimsy grounds. Today we know how foolish the talk is was that our security would be defended in the Hindu Kush.
We must apply exactly the same standards in the immediate present. We have to learn to recognize when someone is trying to convince us of their cause at all costs. When Ursula von der Leyen announces that our Western values are being defended in Ukraine, we have to stop and ask ourselves: Is that true? What values are these specifically? And if our values were so valued in Ukraine, why were applications for EU membership always rejected before the war? If values are so important, why do we make deals with countries like Saudi Arabia? Is it even necessary that the victim of a war of aggression has to defend our values so that we are interested in them? Isn't it enough for a state to use its right to self-defense?
When Karl Lauterbach tells us that a vaccine is "more or less free of side effects", then we have to realize that only shamans, herbal witches or faith healers talk like that, but not serious health politicians. We have to realize that it is completely illusory or even impossible a vaccine could be free of side effects. No vaccine manufacturer would ever claim that their product had "more or less" no side effects. One look at the aspirin package insert is enough to make a mockery of this formulation. Today you hear from people who regurgitated such theories at the time, saying that no one ever claimed that there were no side effects; it was clear that there would always be some damage. Firstly, this statement is usually made in a context of relativization, in which those who have actually been harmed are denied the suffering - according to the motto "It's stupid, but there's always a bit of loss" - and secondly, it's not true. What does "more or" actually mean? less" side effects? The claim of complete freedom from side effects leaves little room for contingencies - they exist or they don't. A dress is no more or less blue.
Why is the war in Ukraine often referred to as "Putin's War" in the media landscape in this country? Was the Iraq War at the beginning of the millennium called "Bush's War" at the time? Since when do we transfer ownership of wars? Who owns the Afghan war? Who cares about the war in Syria?
Why do so many politicians say that they cannot negotiate with Putin because he is a criminal? Only to then negotiate with other heads of state who trample on human rights in the same way? So at some point national or economic interests seem to outweigh freedom and Western values - where exactly is that point? Isn't a US president who made drone warfare boom, joked about his talent for killing and succinctly explained the human rights violations in Guantanamo with the words "We tortured some folks" also a criminal? Not after all. He's even a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
The greatest trick of modern propaganda is that it pretends that the counter-speech is the actual propaganda. As if people who generally rejected compulsory vaccination or the corona vaccination were questionable advocates of a dark ideology - as if the opponents of arms deliveries to Ukraine were useful idiots of an unleashed dictator. Or as if any form of resistance to the specifically spoken word "hate and agitation" is - just note how inflationary and in what contexts this phrase, "hate and agitation", is now being recited. It is the killing argument of a political caste that only believes its own approach is right. She uses "democratic" as a synonym for "right" because that sounds less invasive - nothing beats a good synonym in propaganda, for which the synonym "public relations" is used. So: the "right" thing. is always the "democratic" thing, regardless of whether that is always true in the individual case. Everything that is against it is accordingly "anti-democratic". With this in mind, please first look at the planned "Democracy Promotion Act" and then at the AfD's poll numbers.
The picture of the future that emerges from this speaks for itself.
02/26/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
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