Description
An invaluable primer on media and disinformation in democratic societies. Chomsky’s back-pocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control has been updated and expanded into a two-section book, and redesigned following the acclaimed format of his Open Media anti-war bestseller, 9-11.
The new edition of Media Control also includes “The Journalist from Mars,” Chomsky’s 2002 talk on the media coverage of America’s “new war on terrorism.” Chomsky begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky “propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state,” and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States.
From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission “succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population,” to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war.
Chomsky touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann’s theory of “spectator democracy,” in which the public is seen as a “bewildered herd” that needs to be directed, not empowered; and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on “controlling the public mind,” and not on informing it.
Originally written in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, Media Control cites numerous examples of how Bush Sr. pushed the American population into supporting an attack on Iraq, a particularly relevant analysis today as Bush Jr. attempts to convince a reluctant population that we should again go to war.
Excerpt
The Gulf War
That tells you how a well-functioning propaganda system works. People can believe that when we use force against Iraq and Kuwait it's because we really observe the principle that illegal occupation and human rights abuses should be met by force. They don't see what it would mean if those principles were applied to U.S. behavior.
That's a success of propaganda of quite a spectacular type. Let's take a look at another case. If you look closely at the coverage of the war [against Iraq] since August (1990), you'll notice that there a couple of striking voices missing.
For example, there is an Iraqi democratic opposition, in fact, a very courageous and quite substantial Iraqi democratic opposition. They of course function in exile because they couldn't survive in Iraq. They are in Europe primarily. They are bankers, engineers, architects--people like that. They are articulate, they have voices, and they speak.
Last February (1990), when Saddam Hussein was still George Bush's favorite friend and trading partner, they actually came to Washington, according to Iraqi democratic opposition sources, with a plea for some kind of support for a demand of theirs calling for a parliamentary democracy in Iraq. They were totally rebuffed, because the U.S. had no interest in it.
There was no reaction to this in the public record. Since August (1990) it became a little harder to ignore their existence. In August we suddenly turned against Saddam Hussein after having favored him for many years. Here was an Iraqi democratic opposition (that) ought to have some thoughts about the matter. They would be happy to see Saddam Hussein drawn and quartered.
He killed their brothers, tortured their sisters, and drove them out of the country. They have been fighting against his tyranny throughout the whole time that Ronald Reagan and George Bush were cherishing him.
What about their voices? Take a look at the national media and see how much you can find about the Iraqi democratic opposition from August (1990) through March (1991). You can't find a word. It's not that they're inarticulate. They have statements, proposals, calls and demands. If you look at them, you find that they're indistinguishable from those of the American peace movement.
They're against Saddam Hussein and they're against the war against Iraq. They don't want their country destroyed. What they want is a peaceful resolution, and they knew perfectly well that it was achievable. That's the wrong view and therefore they're out.
We don't hear a word about the Iraqi democratic opposition. If you want to find out about them, pick up the German press, or the British press. They don't say much about them, but they're less controlled than we are and they say something. This is a spectacular achievement of propaganda.
First, that the voices of the Iraqi democrats are completely excluded, and second, that nobody notices it. That's interesting too.
It takes a really deeply indoctrinated population not to notice that we're not hearing the voices of the Iraqi democratic opposition and not asking the question Why and finding out the obvious answer: Because the Iraqi democrats have their own thoughts, they agree with the international peace movement and therefore they're out.
Let's take the question of the reasons for the war. Reasons were offered for the war. The reasons are: Aggressors cannot be rewarded and aggression must be reversed by the quick resort to violence. That was the reason for the war. There was basically no other reason advanced.
Can that possibly be the reason for the war? Does the U.S. uphold those principles, that aggressors cannot be rewarded and that aggression must be reversed by a quick resort to violence? I won't insult your intelligence by running through the facts, but the fact is those arguments could be refuted in two minutes by a literate teenager.
However, they never were refuted. Take a look at the media, the liberal commentators and critics, the people who testified in Congress and see whether anybody questioned the assumption that the U.S. stands up to those principles.
Has the U.S. opposed its own aggression in Panama and insisted on bombing Washington to reverse it?
When the South African occupation of Namibia was declared illegal in 1969, did the U.S. impose sanctions on food and medicine?
Did it go to war? Did it bomb Capetown?
No, it carried out twenty years of "quiet diplomacy." It wasn't very pretty during those years. In the years of the Reagan-Bush administration alone, about a million-and-a-half people were killed by South Africa just in the surrounding countries.
Forget what was happening in South Africa and Namibia. Somehow that didn't sear our sensitive souls. We continued with "quiet diplomacy" and ended up with ample reward for the aggressors. They were given a major port in Namibia and plenty of advantages that took into account their security concerns. Where is this principle that we uphold?
Again, it's child's play to demonstrate that those couldn't possibly have been the reasons for going to war, because we don't uphold these principles. But nobody did it --that's what's important. And nobody bothered to point out the conclusion that follows: No reason was given for going to war; none. No reason was given for going to war that could not be refuted by a literate teenager in about two minutes.
That again is the hallmark of a totalitarian culture. It ought to frighten us, that we are so deeply totalitarian that we can be driven to war without any reason being given for it and without anybody noticing it or caring. It's a striking fact.
Right before the bombing started, in mid-January, a major Washington Post-ABC poll revealed something interesting. People were asked, "If Iraq would agree to withdraw from Kuwait in return for Security Council consideration of the problem of Arab-Israeli conflict, would you be in favor of that?"
About two-thirds of the population was in favor of that. So was the whole world, including the Iraqi democratic opposition.
So it was reported that two-thirds of the American population were in favor of that. Presumably, the people who were in favor of that thought they were the only ones in the world to think so.
Certainly nobody in the press had said that it would be a good idea. The orders from Washington have been, we're supposed to be against "linkage," that is, diplomacy, and therefore everybody goose-stepped on command and everybody was against diplomacy.
Try to find commentary in the press--you can find a column by Alex Cockburn in the Los Angeles Times (also writes in The Nation and England's New Statesman), who argued that it would be a good idea.
The people who were answering that question thought "I'm alone, but that's what I think."
Suppose they knew that they weren't alone, that other people thought it, like the Iraqi democratic opposition. Suppose that they knew that this was not hypothetical, that in fact Iraq had made exactly such an offer. It had been released by high U.S. officials just eight to ten days earlier.
On January 2, these officials had released an Iraqi offer to withdraw totally from Kuwait in return for consideration by the Security Council of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the problem of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. had been refusing to negotiate this issue since well before the invasion of Kuwait.
Suppose that people had known that the offer was actually on the table and that it was widely supported and that in fact it's exactly the kind of thing that any rational person would do if they were interested in peace, as we do in other cases, in rare cases that we do want to reverse aggression. Suppose that it had been known.
You can make your own guesses, but I would assume that the two-thirds of the population would probably have risen to 98% of the population. Here you have the great successes of propaganda.
Probably not one person who answered the poll knew any of the things I've just mentioned. The people thought they were alone. Therefore it was possible to proceed with the war policy without opposition. There was a good deal of discussion about whether sanctions would work. You have the head of the CIA come up and you discuss whether sanctions would work.
However, there was no discussion of a much more obvious question: Had sanctions already worked? The answer is yes, apparently they had--probably by late August, very likely by late December. It was very hard to think up any other reason for the Iraqi offers of withdrawal, which were authenticated or in some cases released by high U.S. officials, who described them as serious and negotiable.
So the real question is: Had sanctions already worked? Was there a way out? Was there a way out right now in terms quite acceptable to the general population, the world at large and the Iraqi democratic opposition? These questions were not discussed, and it's crucial for a well-functioning propaganda system that they not be discussed.
That enables the Chairman of the Republican National Committee to say...that if any Democrat had been in office, Kuwait would not be liberated today. He can say that and no Democrat would get up and say that if he were President it would have been liberated not only today but six months ago, because there were opportunities then that he would have pursued and Kuwait would have been liberated without killing tens of thousands of people and without causing an environmental catastrophe.
No Democrat would say that because no Democrat took that position. Henry Gonzalez and Barbara Boxer took that position, but the number of people who took it is so marginal that it's virtually nonexistent. Given the fact that no Democratic politician would say that, Clayton Yeutter is free to make his statements. When Scud missiles hit Israel, nobody in the press applauded.
Again, that's an interesting fact about a well-functioning propaganda system. We might ask, why not? After all, Saddam Hussein's arguments were as good as George Bush's arguments. What were they, after all? Let's just take Lebanon.
Saddam Hussein says that he can't stand annexation. He can't stand aggression. Israel has been occupying southern Lebanon for thirteen years in violation of Security Council resolutions that it refuses to abide by. In the course of that period it attacked all of Lebanon, still (1991) bombs most of Lebanon at will. He can't stand it.
He might have read the Amnesty International report on Israeli atrocities in the West Bank. His heart is bleeding. He can't stand it. Sanctions can't work because the U.S. vetoes them.
Negotiations can't work because the U.S. blocks them. What's left but force? He's been waiting for years. Thirteen years in the case of the West Bank. You've heard that argument before.
The only difference between that argument and the one you heard is that Saddam Hussein could truly say sanctions and negotiations can't work because the U.S. blocks them; but George Bush couldn't say that, because sanctions apparently had worked, and there was every reason to believe that negotiations could work--except that he adamantly refused to pursue them, saying explicitly, there will be no negotiations right through.
Did you find anybody in the press who pointed that out? No. It's a triviality. It's something that, again, a literate teenager could figure out in a minute. But nobody pointed it out, no commentator, no editorial writer.
That, again, is the sign of a very well-run totalitarian culture. It shows that the manufacture of consent is working.
Last comment about this. We could give many examples, you could make them up as you go along. Take the idea that Saddam Hussein is a monster about to conquer the world--widely believed in the U.S., and not unrealistically. It was drilled into people's heads over and over again: He's about to take everything. We've got to stop him now.
How did he get that powerful? This is a small, Third World country without an industrial base.
For eight years Iraq had been fighting Iran. That's post-revolutionary Iran. It had decimated its officer corps and most of its military force. Iraq had a little bit of support in that war. It was backed by the Soviet Union, the U.S., Europe, the major Arab countries, and the Arab oil producers. It couldn't defeat Iran.
But all of a sudden it's ready to conquer the world. Did you find anybody who pointed that out?
The fact of the matter is, this was a Third World country with a peasant army. It is now being conceded that there was a ton of disinformation about the fortifications, the chemical weapons, etc. But did you find anybody who pointed it out? Virtually nobody. That's typical.
Notice that this was done one year after exactly the same thing was done with Manuel Noriega. Manuel Noriega is a minor thug by comparison with George Bush's friend Saddam Hussein or George Bush himself, for that matter. In comparison with them, Manuel Noriega is a pretty minor thug. Bad, but not a world class thug of the kind we like. He was turned into a creature larger than life.
He was going to destroy us, leading the narco-traffickers. We had to quickly move in and smash him, killing a couple hundred or maybe thousand people, restoring to power the tiny, maybe eight percent white oligarchy, and putting U.S. military officers in control at every level of the political system. We had to do all those things because, after all, we had to save ourselves or we were going to be destroyed by this monster.
One year later the same thing was done by Saddam Hussein. Did anybody point it out? Did anybody point out what had happened and why? You'll have to look pretty far for that.
Notice that this is not all that different from what the Creel Commission did in 1916-17, when within six months it had turned a pacifistic population into raving hysterics who wanted to destroy everything German to save ourselves from Huns who were tearing the arms off Belgian babes.
The techniques are maybe more sophisticated, with television and lots of money going into it, but it's pretty traditional.
I think the issue, to come back to my original comment, is not simply disinformation and the Gulf crisis. The issue is much broader.
It's whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction while the educated masses goose-step on command, repeat the slogans they're supposed to repeat, the society deteriorates at home, we end up serving as a mercenary enforcer state, hoping that others are going to pay us to smash up the world.
Those are the choices. That's the choice that you have to face. The answer to those questions is very much in the hands of people exactly like you and me.
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997, updated 2002.
