Propaganda has played an important role in warfare ever since World War I. Propaganda is used by a nation to increase support for its war effort. Targeted propaganda campaigns are also used by national governments to influence public opinion in the countries they’re at war with and to influence international opinion. Public opinion manipulation is done through propaganda, whether it is state-controlled or private media. It relies on misleading or incomplete information, lies, and deception. During World War II, both the Nazis and the Allies invested heavily in propaganda operations as part of each side’s overall effort to win the war.
The war in Ukraine is no exception. Both Russian and Ukrainian leaders have embarked on a campaign to disseminate warfare information in a way that could easily be called propaganda. Other parties that have a stake in the conflict like the United States or China are also involved with propaganda operations. This is in addition to their apparent lack of interest for diplomatic initiatives to end war.
In the interview that follows, leading scholar and dissident Noam Chomsky, who, along with Edward Herman, constructed the concept of the “propaganda model,” looks at the question of who is winning the propaganda war in Ukraine. Additionally, he discusses how social media shape political reality today, analyzes whether the “propaganda model” still works, and dissects the role of the use of “whataboutism.” Lastly, he shares his thoughts on the case of Julian Assange and what his now almost certain extradition to the United States for having committed the “crime” of releasing public information about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq says about U.S. democratic principles.
Chomsky is widely recognized as one the most important intellectuals living. His intellectual stature is often compared to that a Newton, Galileo and Descartes. His work had a tremendous impact on a variety areas of scientific inquiry and scholarly linguistics. He is the author of some 150 books and the recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), and of dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned universities. Chomsky is currently Laureate Professor at Arizona University and Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT.
C.J. Polychroniou: Wartime propaganda has become in the modern world a powerful weapon in garnering public support for war and providing a moral justification for it, usually by highlighting the “evil” nature of the enemy. It’s also used in order to break down the will of the enemy forces to fight. In the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin propaganda seems so far to be working inside Russia and dominating Chinese social media, but it looks like Ukraine is winning the information war in the global arena, especially in the West. Do you agree? Are there any war-myths or lies that are significant in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
Noam Chomsky: Wartime propagandism has been a powerful weapon since a long time. I think as far back in history as we can find records. This weapon often has long-term consequences that merit our attention and thought.
Just to keep it modern, the U.S. battleship battleship was built in 1898. MaineThe ship sank in Havana harbor after an internal explosion. The Hearst newspaper was able to create a wave popular panic about the evil nature Spain. That provided the needed background for an invasion of Cuba that is called here “the liberation of Cuba.” Or, as it should be called, the prevention of Cuba’s self-liberation from Spain, turning Cuba into a virtual U.S. colony. So it remained until 1959, when Cuba was indeed liberated, and the U.S., almost at once, undertook a vicious campaign of terror and sanctions to end Cuba’s “successful defiance” of the 150-year-old U.S. policy of dominating the hemisphere, as the State Department explained 50 years ago.
It can lead to long-term problems if you make up war stories.
A few years later, in 1916, Woodrow Wilson was elected president with the slogan “Peace without Victory.” That was quickly transmuted to Victory without Peace. A flood of war myths quickly made pacifists into a nation obsessed with hatred for all things German. We know what the British Ministry of Information meant when it first propagandized. The propaganda was enthusiastically received by American intellectuals from the liberal Dewey Circle, who declared themselves the leaders of the campaign for liberation of the world. For the first time in history, they soberly explained, war was not initiated by military or political elites, but by the thoughtful intellectuals — them — who had carefully studied the situation and after careful deliberation, rationally determined the right course of action: to enter the war, to bring liberty and freedom to the world, and to end the Hun atrocities concocted by the British Ministry of Information.
One consequence of the very effective Hate Germany campaigns was imposition of a victor’s peace, with harsh treatment of defeated Germany. John Maynard Keynes was one of those who strongly opposed it. They were ignored. That made Hitler.
In a previous interview, Ambassador Chas Freeman discussed how the postwar Hate Germany settlement was compared to a triumph of statemanship (not by nice folks). The Congress of Vienna, 1815. The Congress sought to establish a European order after Napoleon’s attempt to conquer Europe had been overcome. The Congress incorporated France defeated. That led to a century with relative peace in Europe.
There are many lessons to be learned.
The British were not outdone by President Wilson, who established his own propaganda agency, called the Committee on Public Information (Creel Commissioner), which provided its own services.
These exercises had a long-term impact. Among the members of the Commission were Walter Lippmann, who went on to become the leading public intellectual of the 20th century, and Edward Bernays, who became a prime founder of the modern public relations industry, the world’s major propaganda agency, dedicated to undermining markets by creating uninformed consumers making irrational choices — the opposite of what one learns about markets in Econ 101. The industry encourages rampant consumerism and is a major driver of the world’s disaster. This topic is another.
Both Lippmann and Bernays credited the Creel Commission for demonstrating the power of propaganda in “manufacturing consent” (Lippmann) and “engineering of consent” (Bernays). This “new art in the practice of democracy,” Lippmann explained, could be used to keep the “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” — the general public — passive and obedient while the self-designated “responsible men” will attend to important matters, free from the “trampling and roar of a bewildered herd.” Bernays expressed similar views. They weren’t the only ones to share their views.
Lippmann and Bernays were Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberals. Their conception of democracy was in complete agreement with the dominant liberal conceptions of the time.
The ideas extend broadly to the more free societies, where “unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force,” as George Orwell put the matter in his (unpublished) introduction to Animal Farm on “literary censorship” in England.
It continues. It is especially important to develop methods to manufacture consent in more free societies where the means of state violence are constrained by popular activism. This is especially true in articulately educated circles. These companies are not afraid to impose war-myths.
It works quite often, and it is often spectacular. In today’s Russia, according to reports, a large majority accept the doctrine that in Ukraine, Russia is defending itself against a Nazi onslaught reminiscent of World War II, when Ukraine was, in fact, collaborating in the aggression that came close to destroying Russia while exacting a horrific toll.
The propaganda is as absurd and false as war myths, but it relies on shreds truth. It seems that it has been effective in domestically gaining consent.
We cannot really be sure because of the rigid censorship now in force, a hallmark of U.S. political culture from far back: the “bewildered herd” must be protected from the “wrong ideas.” Accordingly, Americans must be “protected” from propaganda which, we are told, is so ludicrous that only the most fully brainwashed could possibly keep from laughing.
According to this view, in order to punish Vladimir Putin all material from Russia must be blocked from American ears. This includes the work of outstanding U.S. journalists as well as political commentators like Chris Hedges whose long history of courageous journalism includes his service to America as The New York TimesChief of the Middle East and Balkans Bureau, and a wise and perceptive commentator since. His reports are published on American television. Americans must be protected against his evil influence. RT. They have been deleted. Americans are “saved” from reading them.
Take that, Mr. Putin.
As we would expect in a free society, it is possible,With some effort, to learn something about Russia’s official position on the war — or as Russia calls it, “special military operation.” For example, via India, where Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a long interview with India Today TVApril 19.
We are constantly amazed at the instructive effects of rigid indoctrination. One is that it’s de rigueur to refer to Putin’s criminal aggression in Ukraine as his “unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.” A Google search for this phrase finds “About 2,430,000 results” (in 0.42 seconds).
Out of curiosity, we might search for “unprovoked invasion of Iraq.” The search yields “About 11,700 results” (in 0.35 seconds) — apparently from antiwar sources, a brief search suggests.
The example is striking not only for its uniqueness but also for the sharp reversal it brings to light. The Iraq War was completely unprovoked. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had no choice but to work hard to find evidence linking Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda. The famous disappearing weapons of mass destruction wouldn’t have been a provocation for aggression even if there had been some reason to believe that they existed.
In contrast, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was most definitely provoked — though in today’s climate, it is necessary to add the truism that provocation provides no justification for the invasion.
A host of high-level U.S. diplomats and policy analysts have been warning Washington for 30 years that it was reckless and needlessly provocative to ignore Russia’s security concerns, particularly its red lines: No NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, in Russia’s geostrategic heartland.
In full understanding of what it was doing, since 2014, NATO (meaning basically the U.S.), has “provided significant support [to Ukraine] with equipment, with training, 10s of 1000s of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained, and then when we saw the intelligence indicating a highly likely invasion Allies stepped up last autumn and this winter,” before the invasion, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
The U.S. commitment to integrate Ukraine within the NATO command was also stepped up in fall 2021 with the official policy statements we have already discussed — kept from the bewildered herd by the “free press,” but surely read carefully by Russian intelligence. Russian intelligence did not have to be informed that “prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States made no effort to address one of Vladimir Putin’s most often stated top security concerns — the possibility of Ukraine’s membership into NATO,” as the State Department conceded, with little notice here.
Without going into any further details, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was clearly provoked while the U.S. invasion of Iraq was clearly unprovoked. This is the exact opposite of what standard commentary and reporting would suggest. This is the norm for wartime propaganda in all countries, but it is even more instructive to observe it in free societies.
Many feel that it is wrong to bring up such matters, even a form of pro-Putin propaganda: we should, rather, focus laser-like on Russia’s ongoing crimes. Contrary to what they believe, this position does not help Ukrainians. It is harmful to them. If we are not allowed to learn about ourselves, we will not have the ability to develop policies that benefit others, such as Ukrainians. This seems simple.
Further analysis yields many additional instructive examples. We discussed Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe’s praise for President George W. Bush’s decision in 2003 to “aid the Iraqi people” by seizing “Iraqi funds sitting in American banks” — and, incidentally, invading and destroying the country, too unimportant to mention. More fully, the funds were seized “to aid the Iraqi people and to compensate victims of terrorism,” for which the Iraqi people bore no responsibility.
We didn’t go on to ask how the Iraqi people were to be aided. It is a fair guess that it is not compensation for U.S. pre-invasion “genocide” in Iraq.
“Genocide” is not my term. Rather, it is the term used by the distinguished international diplomats who administered the “Oil-for-Food program,” the soft side of President Bill Clinton’s sanctions (technically, via the UN). The first, Denis Halliday, resigned in protest because he regarded the sanctions as “genocidal.” He was replaced by Hans von Sponeck, who not only resigned in protest with the same charge, but also wrote a very important book providing extensive details of the shocking torture of Iraqis by Clinton’s sanctions, A Different Kind of War.
These unpleasant revelations are not always protected for Americans. Though von Sponeck’s book was never reviewed, as far as I can determine, it can be purchased from Amazon (for $95) by anyone who has happened to hear about it. The English edition was published by a small publisher who was able collect two blurbs, one from John Pilger and one from me. These blurbs were sufficiently distant from the mainstream.
There is, of course, a flood of commentary about “genocide.” By the standards used, the U.S. and its allies are guilty of the charge over and over, but voluntary censorship prevents any acknowledgment of this, just as it protects Americans from international Gallup polls showing that the U.S. is regarded as by far the greatest threat to world peace, or that world public opinion overwhelmingly opposed the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (also “unprovoked,” if we pay attention), and other improper information.
I don’t think there are “significant lies” in war reporting. The U.S. media do a creditable job in reporting Russian crimes against Ukraine. That’s valuable, just as it’s valuable that international investigations are underway in preparation for possible war crimes trials.
This is also a common pattern. We are very careful when it comes to uncovering details about other criminal acts. There are always fabrications, sometimes to the point of comedy, that we have to uncover. These matters were documented in detail by Edward Herman (later deceased) and me. Journalists do a great job reporting on enemy crimes when they can be seen directly on the ground. They are further explored through scholarship and extensive investigation.
As we’ve discussed, on the very rare occasions when U.S. crimes are so blatant that they can’t be dismissed or ignored, they may also be reported, but in such a way as to conceal the far greater crimes to which they are a small footnote. For example, the My Lai massacre.
On Ukraine winning the information war, the qualification “in the West” is accurate. The U.S. has always been enthusiastic about exposing the crimes committed by its enemies. Europe is following suit in this case. The picture is more complicated if you are not from the U.S. In the Global South, the home of most of the world’s population, the invasion is denounced but the U.S. propaganda framework is not uncritically adopted, a fact that has led to considerable puzzlement here as to why they are “out of step.”
That’s quite normal too. Traditional victims of brutal violence and repression often see things differently than those who were used to holding the whip.
Even in Australia, there’s a measure of insubordination. The international affairs journal ArenaStanley Cooper, editor, reviews and condemns the rigid censorship of any mild dissent in U.S. media. He concludes, reasonably enough, that, “This means it is almost impossible within mainstream opinion to simultaneously acknowledge Putin’s insupportable actions And forge a path out of the war that does not involve escalation, and the further destruction of Ukraine.”
There is no help for the suffering Ukrainians.
That’s also nothing new. This has been a common pattern for a long period, especially during World War I. There were a few who didn’t simply conform to the orthodoxy established after Wilson joined the war. The country’s leading labor leader, Eugene Debs, was jailed for daring to suggest to workers that they should think for themselves. He was so detested by the liberal Wilson administration that he was excluded from Wilson’s postwar amnesty. There were some disobedient Deweyite intellectuals. Randolph Bourne is the most well-known. He was not imprisoned but was barred from liberal journals so that he could not spread his subversive message that “war is the health of the state.”
I should also mention the fact that Dewey retracted his stand a few more years later.
Liberals should be thrilled when they have the chance to condemn enemy crime. They are once again on the side for power. They can march in the parade rightly condemning their crimes and be praised for (quite properly) their conformity. This is tempting for those who, even if timidly condemn, crimes for which they share responsibility and are thus castigated for adhering to basic moral principles.
Is it harder to get a true picture of the political reality because of social media?
It’s hard to say. It’s especially difficult for me because I avoid social networks and only have limited information. It is a mixed message, my impression.
Social media offers the opportunity to hear diverse perspectives and analysis, as well as to find information that is often not available in mainstream media. However, it isn’t clear how these opportunities are used. There has been a good deal of commentary — confirmed by my own limited experience — arguing that many tend to gravitate to self-reinforcing bubbles, hearing little beyond their own beliefs and attitudes, and worse, entrenching these more firmly and in more intense and extreme forms.
The basic news sources, however, remain the same as before: the mainstream media, which has reporters and offices on the ground. Although the internet allows you to access a wider variety of media, my impression is that they are rarely used.
The rapid growth of social media has had a negative effect on the decline of mainstream media. There were many fine local media in the U.S. not long ago. Few people have Washington bureaus or other Washington-based media as they did not have long ago. During Ronald Reagan’s Central America wars, which reached extremes of sadism, some of the finest reporting was done by reporters of the Boston Globe, close friends. All of that has almost disappeared.
Advertiser reliance is one of the curses that the capitalist system has brought on. The vision of the founding fathers was a different one. They supported a truly independent press, and they encouraged it. This is why the Post Office was established. It provides cheap access for independent media.
The U.S. is unusually a business-run country. It also has virtually no public media. Nothing like the United Kingdom. BBC,For example. Efforts to develop public service media — first in radio, later in TV — were beaten back by intense business lobbying.
There’s excellent scholarly work on this topic, which extends also to serious activist initiatives to overcome these serious infringements on democracy, particularly by Robert McChesney and Victor Pickard.
Edward Herman and you published the book “Almost 35 Years Ago” Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. The book introduced the “propaganda model” of communication which operates through five filters: ownership, advertising, the media elite, flak and the common enemy. Has the digital age changed the “propaganda” model?” Does it still work?
Unfortunately, Edward — the prime author — is no longer with us. It is greatly missed. I think he would agree with me that the digital age hasn’t changed much, beyond what I just described. The main source for information in a business-run society is still mainstream media. This means that it is subject to the same pressures as ever before.
Apart from the changes I briefly mentioned, there have been many important ones. Much like other institutions, even including the corporate sector, the media have been influenced by the civilizing effects of the popular movements of the ‘60s and their aftermath. It is very interesting to see what was considered appropriate commentary and reporting in the earlier years. These liberating experiences are not uncommon for journalists.
Naturally, there is a huge backlash, including passionate denunciations of “woke” culture that recognizes that there are human beings with rights apart from white Christian males. Since Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” the GOP leadership has understood that since they cannot possibly win votes on their economic policies of service to great wealth and corporate power, they must try to direct attention to “cultural issues”: the false idea of a “Great Replacement,” or guns, or indeed anything to obscure the fact that we’re working hard to stab you in the back. Donald Trump was a master of this technique, sometimes called the “thief, thief” technique: when you’re caught with your hand in someone’s pocket, shout “thief, thief” and point somewhere else.
Despite all these efforts, media have made significant improvements in this area, reflecting changes in society. That’s by no means unimportant.
What do you make of “whataboutism,” which is stirring up quite a controversy these days on account of the ongoing war in Ukraine?
Here again there’s a long history. In the early period after World War II. [World War II]Independent thought could be silenced through charges of comsymp: you’re an apologist for Stalin’s crimes. It’s sometimes condemned as McCarthyism, but that was only the vulgar tip of the iceberg. What is now denounced as “cancel culture” was rampant and remained so.
That technique lost some of its power as the country began to awaken from dogmatic slumber in the ‘60s. In the early ‘80s, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a major Reaganite foreign policy intellectual, devised another technique: moral equivalence. If you reveal and criticize the atrocities that she was supporting in the Reagan administration, you’re guilty of “moral equivalence.” You’re claiming that Reagan is no different than Stalin or Hitler. It was used to subdue dissent.
Whataboutism is a new form of whataboutism, which is not much different from its predecessors.
None of these are enough for a true totalitarian mentality. GOP leaders are working hard to cleanse the schools of anything that is “divisive” or that causes “discomfort.” That includes virtually all of history apart from patriotic slogans approved by Trump’s 1776 Commission, or whatever will be devised by GOP leaders when they take command and are in a position to impose stricter discipline. We see many signs of it today, and there’s every reason to expect more to come.
It’s important to remember how rigid doctrinal controls have been in the U.S. — perhaps a reflection of the fact that it is a very free society by comparative standards, hence posing problems to the doctrinal managers, who must be ever alert to signs of deviation.
By now, after many years, it’s possible to utter the word “socialist,” meaning moderately social democrat. In this regard, the U.S. has finally come out of the shadow of totalitarian dictatorships. Go back 60 years and even the words “capitalism” and “imperialism” were too radical to voice. Students for a Democratic Society President Paul Potter, in 1965, summoned the courage to “name the system” in his presidential address, but couldn’t manage to produce the words.
There were some breakthroughs in the ‘60s, a matter of deep concern to American liberals, who warned of a “crisis of democracy” as too many sectors of the population tried to enter the political arena to defend their rights. They counseled more “moderation in democracy,” a return to passivity and obedience, and they condemned the institutions responsible for “indoctrination of the young” for failing to perform their duties.
Since then, more doors have been open to the public, which means that it is more urgent to enforce discipline.
If GOP authoritarians are capable of destroying democracy sufficiently to establish permanent control by a white supremacist Christian Nationalist caste subservient in extreme wealth, we will likely enjoy the antics such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a Republican who banned 40 percent of children’s math texts in Florida because of “references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” according to the official directive. Under pressure, the State released some terrifying examples, such as an educational objective that, “Students build proficiency with social awareness as they practice with empathizing with classmates.”
If the country as a whole ascends to the heights of GOP aspirations, it will be unnecessary to resort to such devices as “moral equivalence” and “whataboutism” to stifle independent thought.
One final question. A U.K. judge has formally approved Julian Assange’s extradition to the U.S. despite deep concerns that such a move would put him at risk of “serious human rights violations,” as Agnès Callamard, former UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, had warned a couple of years ago. Assange could face up to 175 year imprisonment if he is extradited by the U.S. (which is almost certain). Can you comment on Julian Assange’s case, the law that prosecuted him, and what his persecution means for freedom of speech, and democracy in the United States?
Assange has been held in torture conditions for many years. That’s fairly evident to anyone who was able to visit him (I was, once) and was confirmedThe UN Special Rapporteur on Torture [and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment]Nils Melzer, May 2019.
A few days later Assange was indictedTrump administration under the Espionage Act of 1918, the same act President Wilson used in imprisoning Eugene Debs (among other State crimes) using the Act.
The basic reasons Assange was indicted and tortured are not legalistic. He released information about U.S. criminal acts that the government would prefer to keep secret. This is especially offensive to Trump and Mike Pompeo who initiated the proceedings under Section 201 of the Espionage Act.
It is understandable that they are concerned. Samuel Huntington, Harvard Professor of Science of Government, explained them years ago. He observed that, “Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.”
This is a fundamental principle of statecraft. This principle also applies to private power. That is why manufacture/engineering of consent is a prime concern of systems of power, state and private.
This is not a novel insight. In one of the first works in what is now called political science, 350 years ago, his “First Principles of Government,” David Hume wrote that,
To those who view human affairs from a philosophical perspective, there is nothing more surprising than the ease with the which the many are governed. The implicit submission, in which men submit to the will of their rulers, is also quite astonishing. If we investigate how this miracle is achieved, we will find that Force is always on their side, and the governors have no other support than opinion. It is therefore only on opinion that government is founded. This maxim applies to both the most despotic and the most military governments as well as the most free and popular.
The governed are often supported by force, especially in more free societies. And they’d better not realize it, or the structures of illegitimate authority will crumble, state and private.
These ideas were developed over time, most notably by Antonio Gramsci. The threat he posed was well understood by the Mussolini dictatorship. When he was imprisoned, the prosecutor announced that, “We must prevent this brain from functioning for 20 years.”
Since fascist Italy, our country has made great strides. Trump-Pompeo’s indictment seeks silence Assange over 175 years. The U.S., U.K. governments have already imposed decades of torture on Assange who dares to expose his power to the sun.
