Liberal Propaganda Threatens America’s Security

The moment anyone mentions the name of Hitler, antennas go up, but he had some interesting things to say about propaganda. In this article I hope to demonstrate how propagandists can destroy America without firing a shot.

Anyone who knows and is willing to make an honest assessment will say that the MSM is biased. But the question is why? Certainly there are exceptions. Not all Hollywood actors are terrorist-sympathizers: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited the CSI set to thank actor Gary Sinise personally for his support of the "America Supports You" program through his "Operation Iraqi Children" effort. But the actors who make the front page are those who are anti-war activists, or simply “Bushwhackers.”

The success of the war on terror depends upon the resolve of the American people to fight until it is over, and it is not over until there are no more terrorists’ attacks. Even one attack should be unacceptable, whether it is carried out in the continental United States, or elsewhere. There are many positive stories that could be filling the font pages of the MSM, but they are not.

On August 6, 2005 the American Forces Press Service reported the following successes in Iraq: Coalition forces in Iraq captured seven terrorists, and stopped nine car bombers dead in their tracks before they could do any damage, and coalition forces killed six terrorists and captured twelve when they foiled an attack on their army post south of Baghdad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari expressed his satisfaction with the gathering momentum in Iraq. He witnessed the graduation of 750 new security personnel saying that he is “very content with this level”. He also mentioned “Operation Lightning” which deployed 40,000 members of the Iraqi security forces to interdict terrorists, stop the flow of personnel, money and materials to them.

These are only a few of the positive stories that might have appeared on the front pages of millions of America’s newspapers. Instead this is how, for example, the Washington Post reported the story:

Operation Lightning, Operation Dagger -- every day they use a different name for a new military operation," Khazraji said, ticking off recent U.S.-backed military raids against insurgents. "But the attacks killing mostly civilians increase every day. I don't know who they are arresting -- either they are arresting the wrong people, or the number of terrorists in Iraq is so big now they can't control it."[1]

The L.A. Times covered the story this way: The plan envisions extending measures employed in Operation Lightning, a crackdown against insurgents in the capital, to other cities. However, despite the deployment of tens of thousands of police and national guard troops, hundreds of arrests and many new checkpoints, the effort appears to have had little effect on the insurgency.[2] To make sure that the entire country is aware of the failures of Operation Lighting, the local parrot-press organizations set their typefaces. The same negative news appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Orlando Sentinel, and in the Heartland, The (Fort Wayne, IN) Journal Gazette administered their dose of arsenic as well.

Army Brig. Gen. James G. Champion, commanding the Combined Joint Task Force 76 reported to the Pentagon that the Taliban are losing the war of persuasion because Afghan citizens prefer the reconstruction progress of the new government to the destruction wrought by the Taliban, but the stories that did make the major newspapers were based on the Taliban’s successes. Some notable headlines included “Suspected Taliban in Disguise Kill Officers”, “Taliban murder top clerics”, “Taliban targeting Afghan religious leaders”, “ Taliban Official Pledges To continue Holywar In Afghanistan”, just to name a few.

What is the point of all these negative headlines? Do they merely demonstrate political bias? Are they simply anti-war sentiments? Or do they signal a more ominous and threatening presence that is even more sinister?

To start with I am not comparing the liberal propaganda media Hitler, but he rose to power on the wings of propaganda. Which proves how dangerous propaganda can be to a nation. He once observed that “The aim for which we were fighting the War was the loftiest, the most overpowering, that man can conceive: it was the freedom and independence of our nation, the security of our future food supply, and-our national honor.” There is no denying the noble cause for which so many innocent people died. The means he chose to eliminate those who he held accountable for Germany’s defeat made him the most hated man in modern history.

Today America is fighting global terrorists and anti-war sentiment at home. I do not mean to say that all those who oppose war are anti-American. Still they weaken the will of Americans to support the fight. Anti-warists won the war for communism in Vietnam, not the communists. By anti-warists I refer to those who do not want American soldiers to fight terrorists in Iraq, who will not want them to fight in Iran, or North Korea, or elsewhere when military force is necessary, who do not want our police to invade anyone’s privacy, which includes terrorists. And who is more anti-war than the national media in America? Only America’s enemies are.

I use Hitler as an example of the propaganda machine that he operated. Hitler who rose to prominence did so partly because he could. He reacted against anti-nationalists who he called “internationalists”. He may have had a point. He wrote: “The…nation was engaged in a struggle for a human existence, and the purpose of war propaganda should have been to support this struggle; its aim to help bring about victory.” Victory for America will only be possible if Americans are willing to support the struggle against evil.

America’s international struggle is not against WMD’s. In this modern war of terror, the fight is for the soul of humanity. The war is not a fight against princes and principalities; America is fighting a spiritual war against evil, and the forces of evil. Domestically those who love America are fighting a war of words. Anti-war propaganda is sharper than any two edged sword. America represents the world’s moral authority. Even Hitler’s tortured logic makes the point: “Humanitarianism and aesthetics would vanish even from a world inhabited by man if this world were to lose the [countries] that have created and upheld these concepts.”

The anti-war propagandists would like to strip America of its moral authority. Take for example the furor over the treatment of a few prisoners by a few American soldiers who were wrong and punished accordingly. Was the public outcry by anti-wariests justified? What useful purpose did it serve? Was it a call for the humanitarian treatment of prisoners, or was it calculated to bring disgrace upon a political party, and public scorn against America’s military personnel? Or was it more than that? Taken to the extreme humanitarianism would prohibit all retaliation against evildoers. Taken to the opposite extreme it resulted in the cruel deaths of millions of innocent victims by Hitler who had this to say about humanitarianism, [it] might paralyze a struggling nation's power of self-preservation. And that has always been [its] only visible result. Obviously no reasonable person would say that for war to succeed humanitarianism must be abandoned. But if war cannot exist because it is inhuman, then a nation can not defend itself against man’s inhumanity to man.

“Helmuth von Moltke (1848-1916) reportedly said that in war humanitarianism lies in the brevity of the operation, and that means that the most aggressive fighting technique is the most humane.” By that standard it can be said that the US acted humanely in Afghanistan and Iraq by swiftly and decisively removed two inhumane dictators from power?

Are we fighting against WMD’s or the terrorists who are likely to use them? WMD’s are not the problem. The United States possessed WMD’s, and some would say that it used them for good, and not for evil. “all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in sloans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. The most cruel weapons were humane if they brought about a quicker victory”. This was not a statement made by President Harry Truman, when he ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was Hitler who made that observation, but how might he see ambivalence about the use of such force? “If the so-called responsible authorities had been clear on this point, they would never have fallen into such uncertainty over the form and application of this weapon: for even propaganda is no more than a weapon, though a frightful one in the hand of an expert.”

Indeed, propaganda can be a more powerful deterrent to war than a formidable enemy, one that is well equipped, well financed, well organized, and one without morality of purpose. The art of propaganda is not to educate but to persuade. Hitler knew how to convince his potential followers: “The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct … its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.”

To be sure all sides use persuasion to garner support for their objective, but propaganda is based upon false information, or selectively eliminates facts that might otherwise change the argument or completely eliminate it, and it is not only wrong, but dangerous, and when such fallacies are believed they sound the death knell for truth.

By calling President Bush a liar, his enemies hope to convince everyone that he cannot be the moral leader of the nation. They know that Saddam possessed WMD’s. They know he used them on his own people, but while knowing the truth, they exchange it for lie. Hitler also knew how to convince, and his viewpoint is worth considering. “All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.”

Hitler was nefarious to say the least, but how was he able to convince masses of people to believe in his lie? He did so by making effective use of the propaganda techniques that he had learned from the “internationalist press” as he called them: “The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign.”

Which brings us to why liberals use talking points instead of a lengthily and erudite argument. Hitler perfected the art of propaganda because he understood that “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous…all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” The liberal press also understands, and its implements of propaganda are more dangerous than WMD’s. Propaganda is more threading to national security than the Taliban.

[1] Washington Post, The (DC) July 25, 2005 Author: Naseer Nouri and Omar Fekeiki; Special to The Washington Post

[2] Los Angeles Times (CA) July 25, 2005 Author: Alissa J. Rubin; Times Staff WriterForeign Desk

Well you have it now.

Here are a few more that you may find of use

Those are some kind of posters, I wish America would start taking this war serious before its to late.

The MSN will not get on board for one reason only, they hate President Bush and do not want to see him succeed even if it is best for our country. They in fact are betting things may get worse and one of there own (A Democrat) will come riding up on a white horse and save the day.

It sounds strange that a group of people would wish harm on there own country, but I believe we are at a point in the United States as never before. Not since the Civil war has ones party (Democrat) been so angry with there own failure that they would wish for a bad outcome to a war.

Inevitably, it is a delicate matter to quote Hitler on propaganda, in a way that suggests that the US needs Hitlerian propaganda to get its way in Iraq. That is not your point, but you know for certain that any Democrat would have you fighting that charge so much that your actual points could not be heard. So it is only in an explicitly conservative forum such as FR that this article can be at all fairly be evaluated.
The first comment I would make is that Benito Mussolini rose to prominence as Italy's foremost journalist, that he made it a point of propaganda pride that he had siezed power by force (even though the Italian establishment was falling all over itself to fawn on him and give him the keys to the country), and that having taken control of the country he established himself as, effectively, the nation's editor-in-chief.

Anyone who knows and is willing to make an honest assessment will say that the MSM is biased. But the question is why?

Analysis of this question, and of how to react to it, has been a preoccupation of mine for decades; since 9/14/01 I have been keeping alive the FR thread Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate. I initially created the thread as a vanity to explain my own analysis of the problem, and since then I have used it as a repository to document my responses to the various FR threads which have aroused my interest as being related to the issue of "bias in the media"
IMHO "bias in the media" belongs in scare quotes to suggest that the issue can be cast in a better way. My analysis is that everyone has a perspective, so it's futile to call the perspective of a journalist "bias." In fact it is even fawning to do so, because it is arrogant for anyone to claim that they do not have a perspective. It is after all always arrogant to argue from the premise that you have a virtue superior to that of the person you are debating - and that is exactly what establishment journalism does when it claims to be objective.
Anyone who is heartsore over the political collapse known as Vietnam, and exercised over the possibility of a repeat in Iraq, would do well to read Freeper marron's excellent Mom, Apple Pie, and the Ghost of Quagmires Past

The MSN will not get on board for one reason only, they hate President Bush and do not want to see him succeed even if it is best for our country.

No,... go back and look at the press in the years leading up to WWII and exactly when they had a bell weather change in editorial tone to become bellicose supporters of being the Arsenal for Democracy and their overall attitude to the war in Europe.

Hint,.... it changed after something called Operation Barbarossa.

Getting the picture now?

BTW as soon as Germany Surrendered the NYSlimes started publishing stories similar to those today even while we were still fighting Japan.

Your points are well taken. The mere mention of Hitler would brand me an anti-Semite by liberals, but my loyalty is to FR’s who I rely upon for honest, sincere criticism and information worth knowing. I did begin to read your post on Broadcast Journalism. The question of limiting the airways is a tough one since without some control the strongest signal could potentially step on others. At least the FCC has given lip service to Leased Access, which was intended to give independent producers the right to lease time on local cable, but cable companies have found ways to prevent access by requiring producers to buy expensive liability insurance to cover the cable operators, when in fact the cable companies are not responsible for the content of the lessees.

I agree with your point about built-in bias. Aside from the editorial pages and talk radio, which are transparently biased, the hard news will never be sterilized from viewpoint bias. The best we can hope for is a better balance. The problem as I see it is that viewpoint bias is invisible to anyone with the same point of view. Since individuals with the same viewpoint overwhelmingly populate the MSM, it is natural that the audience will adopt their point of view almost automatically. At least that has been my observation and belief.

The war of words is really a war of ideas. If the idea is unpopular such as is abortion, proponents have to change the emphasis. Stem cell research is more about justifying abortion than saving lives. If pro-abortion advocates can argue that abortion has the potential of saving billions of lives, they have won the propaganda war.

Thank you for reading the article and responding.

In thinking about the "anti" message of the moment, be it Plame or Roberts or the WOT, I really have only a very few questions to ask, namely

If the Democrats were in power,
1) would they pull out quickly, i.e., within 6 months?
2) would they acquiesce to the demands originally made by al-Q?
3) would they undercut ties with Israel and/or give up Taiwan?
4) would they get us off ME'ern oil and cheap Chinese imports?

Where do we draw the line, really? With our allies, e.g. Britain or Taiwan? Do we cave only when our major corporations are foreign owned, or we can't get affordable products anymore?

What purpose does the "anti" message of the moment serve except to divide and conquer? Are Americans not willing to defend our vested national interests in preserving our way of life?

It's as though the communistic goals of overthrowing this country have succeeded in the nation's newsrooms. If those said newsrooms are merely mouthpieces for the DNC, then logically the DNC is actually trying to give away this country to its enemies by disheartening its populace and encouraging its enemies. Someone would think that there must be a whole lot of--no doubt--foreign money fueling such an effort, both from the ME and China. Soros is one name we know for sure, but the decidedly seditious words and actions of the media tells a different story, one that only serves to fuel discontent, which, perhaps is its ultimate objective.

Aside from the editorial pages and talk radio, which are transparently biased,

"Aside" from them, in the sense that they wear their perspectives on their sleeves, rather than presumptuously claiming objectivity

the hard news will never be sterilized from viewpoint bias.

. . . because a viewpoint is embedded in the process of story selection, and that viewpoint may not have been examined by the journalist. Certainly the last thing the journalist would brag about is the inherent limitations of the "objectivity" of story selection.

The best we can hope for is a better balance.

The best we can hope for, IMHO, is not better balance in pseudoobjective journalism but better appreciation by the audience of the arrogance inherent in claiming objectivity.

The problem as I see it is that viewpoint bias is invisible to anyone with the same point of view.

I admit that it is hard for people to fully discount their own perspective, but I assert that the arrogant among us don't think they have to try. Conservatives are innundated with the perspective of "objective" journalism, and it takes real work to parse out why that perspective exists - and the justification for conservatives to discount it.

If nobody can be unbiased or 'objective,' would you say that it makes sense to believe that NOTHING really matters but PR? In other words, if the truth is truly unaccessible go for power.

I think that might be the Nietzschean view; redgolum's tag line suggests that possibly he might elucidate that point.
But that is not what I believe, nor what I meant. The Bible will tell you not to be arrogant; "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." If you and I dispute an issue, and you insist a priori that you are objective, and that all further discussion must take that as a starting point, you are arrogant. You are in fact a Sophist - a claimer of wisdom.
If I take a philosophical view ("philo" = brotherly love + "sophy" = of wisdom), I claim only that I love wisdom - and will listen to reason - rather than that I am wise - and have no need to trouble myself listening to your arguments. To take the philosophical view does not deny the existence of wisdom (far from it) but it does rule out arguing from a claim of wisdom.
Of course for the philosophical view to admit the existence of wisdom, it must allow and insist on there being a conclusion to argument; if the sophist cannot win with a reasonable standard of proof he is likely to demand an ever higher standard of proof rather than to admit defeat.

If nobody can be unbiased or 'objective,' would you say that it makes sense to believe that NOTHING really matters but PR? In other words, if the truth is truly unaccessible go for power.

There is a school of thought (not necessarily Nietzschean, but it fits in there) that you are correct BEJ. The question isn't if we all have our biases, but if we are dedicated to the truth. If we are sincerely trying to find the truth, you make an honest attempt to show what is going on. If you are trying to convey and "Great Truth" to the "General Will", then you will present the facts, or make them up, to advance that view.

I am biased. I have a world view that lends me to interpret news in a certain way. I am also aware that I have that bias, and that I need to keep a close eye on it so I don't miss something. There are those, on both sides of the political spectrum, who have no problem spinning pure propaganda. Think the left is the only one? Listen to Sean Hannity sometime.

In the press today, the point isn't to report "the news", but to spin the data to give a desired out come. Clausewitz and Machiavelli would see this as the state effectively managing the people to give a desired outcome. As someone in journalism school today what they actually learn about the news. I will give you a hint. In 1991, my college sophomore sister in journalism called me, a high school freshmen, to ask "What is going on in Iraq? My current even class wants to know and I figured you had been following this." Her current event class was all about delivery and how to frame the story, and had managed to miss that the US was going to war.

In short, the actual news was less important than giving that news the "correct" framing.

I am biased. I have a world view that lends me to interpret news in a certain way. I am also aware that I have that bias, and that I need to keep a close eye on it so I don't miss something. There are those, on both sides of the political spectrum, who have no problem spinning pure propaganda. Think the left is the only one? Listen to Sean Hannity sometime.

My position is that there is no one who is less aware of the limitations of their own viewpoint than the "objective" journalist.
That one need only appeal to the "If it bleeds it leads" negativity and the deadline pressure superficiality of journalism to demonstrate that journalism tends toward cynicism.
And that talk radio hosts are actually journalists but, being open about their (usually conservative) perspective, are not nearly as tendentious as the "objective" journalist is. Think Hannity is biased? How about your typical journalist rooting for enough American deaths in Iraq to vindicate his desire to embarrass the Bush Administration?!

I gather that you believe it is still worthwhile to purse the truth, regardless of our biases. Hopefully we can be aware of our biases and go beyond them -- though the truth may not always come to us as the whole truth or be pretty and reassuring. I still think it is important to believe that the truth is accessible, in spite of the relativism and the nay sayers of postmodern linguistics studies. Just to say that we have biases suggests that our world view is not complete, that there is something beyond us that we glimpse in part, and, sometimes, through the starting points of our biases. Like you said, it is important to find it out, to be dedicated to it, whether we ever fully succeed at seeing it completely or not.

You're right about spinning the news and that is why I can't stand CNN.

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