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Propaganda and Misinformation of the USA
By : Ezzeddine Ben Othman
Disinformation:
The USA Government practices disinformation and manipulation of the masses, to mobilize them. This manipulation includes diffusion of false, or concocted stories, and unverifiable rumors. War is presented as a “just”, inevitable, defensive and/or preventive.
Disinformation has its rules: the crisis precedes the conflict, and the enemy state is depicted as a satanic one, and its president as a wrongdoer, a psychopath, a communist, a nazi, and assassin.
Those who are in favor of a political solution are dubbed « soft, naive pacifists ».
Since the end of the cold war, the USA undertook, in every crisis, a huge campaign, to prepare the masses for war. Being the “masters of telecommunications”, they have a multitude of “communication Departments” within their administration, the White House and Pentagon, let alone the CIA and the State Department. All this besides the advisors and “Public Relations” PHDs, whose task is to conquer the Hearts and the minds.
Influencing the minds of the adversaries isn’t a novelty. But development of Psychology and Psychoanalysis helped the USA a great deal, in hiding their real intentions. Mass Psychology developed by Tarde and Le Bon, allowed the use of “scientific techniques of Influence”.
The development of Telecommunications allowed the practice of these techniques, remotely: mass media, radio, TV, etc.
In exerting influence on an enemy, the USA makes sure that the world doesn’t doubt the justification of the war and its whole propaganda machine. If the world discovers your real intentions war becomes difficult.
US war propaganda doesn’t only deliver false stories and inverted truth, but also acts on the psyche and conscience of the masses and the world populations. The US for example have depicted that their aggressiveness is a “missionary”, a “beneficial” and “healing” policy.
Psychological war is used:
1) To seduce the masses with an well chosen jargon.
2) Convince the enemy in times of Peace, of the holiness of the US efforts
3) Mobilize the masses and seduce them with the proposition of Peace.
4) keep neutral countries at bay from the conflict, and try to convince them of the pacifist intentions, in order to make them join the fight against the enemy.
5) Convince US citizens that war is legitimate because it is the enemy who imposed it.
To achieve this, censorship is used. Fighting counter-propaganda, also precedes, and goes side by side with, the war. The resort to « lies » to trick the enemy is used.
We can see that there is no difference between the USA propaganda war and that of Hitler, as he summarized it: “We should obtain the moral defeat of the adversary, before the war itself”.
Manipulation of the Minds starts during the time of Peace, through and after the war.
1917, creation in the USA of Comities for Public Information
Woodrow Wilson, symbol of internationalism and idealism was also the inventor of modern propaganda. The intervention against Germany in 1917, was prepared by these committees. Slogans were invented, such as “war to put an end to all wars”, and “make the world safe and ready for democracy”.
All these methods were used during the WWII, too.
After 1945, cold war launched a war for influence. Russians were doing well, but CIA waged a ferocious, ultimately successful cultural cold war, stressing democracy as its main topic.
Public Diplomacy:
Manipulation too is disguised in official clothing. Its main function is to promote national interests of the USA, by means of Information and Influence. The postulate is: If peoples know the USA, they would love it. This implies the spreading of a positive image of the USA, exportation of the US culture to individuals, elites and the large masses.
The USIA (U.S. Information Agency), established in 1953 by Eisenhower, assumed this responsibility, during the whole cold war. After the 9/11, this policy was rather explicit. Propaganda assumed the task of changing the other’s mentality, by means of Formatting, in the same way you format a Hard Disk Drive.
From the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) to the Office of Special Plans (OSP)
In February 2001, Pentagon created, secretly, (OSI) the Office for Strategic Influence. Its task was to organize vast media campaigns, in foreign countries. These media campaigns might send false information to foreign media.
OSI proposed to lead “Black Campaigns” or campaigns of “disinformation”, and “White Campaigns” aiming at whitening, polishing the USA policy.
The USA estimated that governments don’t understand the US policy.
Birth of the Office of Special Plans:
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State for Defense, was attacked for the secret establishment of the OSI. He apologized, closed it down and replaced it with the OSP (Office of Special Plans).
This office was said to be an anti-terrorist organization. But its activities are still unknown.
Mind Control –a Tool of Imperialism
"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace (Tacitus" ). Throughout 20th century imperialism, the authorities of Britain, Belgium and France gassed, bombed and massacred indigenous populations from Sudan to Iraq, Nigeria to Palestine, India to Malaya, Algeria to the Congo. And yet imperialism only got its bad name when Hitler decided to be an imperialist. Of course behind the ideology of imperialism were euphemisms like white man’s burden, civilizing mission, saving of souls. But now emboldened, even respected US academics freely use empire for US dominance, which it took over from the British.
(K Gajendra Singh, Indian retired ambassador, (to Turkey, Jordan; Romania and Senegal).
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