% FROM THE NOAM CHOMSKY ARCHIVE
% http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu:/usr/tp0x/chomsky.html
% ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/cap/chomsky/
% Filename:    articles/chomsky.pr.orwells-and-ours
% Title:       Propaganda Systems: Orwell's and Ours
% Author:      Noam Chomsky
% Appeared-in: Propaganda Review, Number 1, Winter 1987/88
% Source:      Dan Epstein 
% Keywords:    
% Synopsis:    
% See-also:    

PROPAGANDA SYSTEMS: ORWELL'S AND OURS
Noam Chomsky


Although we call our era the age of Orwell, the fact is that
Orwell was a latecomer on the scene.  In the 1920's, a
sophisticated American public relations industry was already
developing and writing about the tools Orwell described.

Even earlier, during the First World War, American historians
offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a
task they called ``historical engineering,'' by which they meant
designing the facts of history so that they would serve state
policy.  That's Orwell, long before Orwell was writing.

In 1921, the famous American journalist Walter Lippmann said that
the art of democracy requires what he called the ``manufacture of
consent,'' what the public relations industry calls the
``engineering of consent,'' another Orwellism meaning ``thought
control.''  The idea was that in a state in which the government
can't control the people by force, it had better control what
they think.

The Soviet Union is at the opposite end of the spectrum from us
domestically.  It's essentially a country run by the bludgeon, a
command state.  There, it's very easy to determine what
propaganda is: what the state produces is propaganda.

That's the kind of thing that Orwell described in 1984---not a
very good book.  In my opinion, 1984 is so popular because it's
trivial and because it's about our enemies.  If Orwell had dealt
with a different problem---ourselves---his book wouldn't have
been popular.  In fact, it probably wouldn't have been published.

In societies where there's a Ministry of Truth, propaganda
doesn't really try to control your thoughts.  It just gives you
the party line.  It says, ``Here's the official doctrine; don't
disobey and you won't get in trouble.  What you think is not of
great importance to anyone.  If you get out of line we'll do
something to you because we have force.''

Democratic societies can't work like that, because the state is
much more limited in its capacity to control behavior by force.
If the voice of the people is heard, you'd better control what
that voice says, meaning you have to control what people think.

One of the ways to do that is to create a debate so that it looks
like there are many opinions, but to make sure that the debate
stays within very narrow margins.  You have to make sure that
both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those
assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system.  As long as
everyone accepts the propaganda system, then a debate is
permissible.


``Tweedle-dum, Tweedle-dee''

The Vietnam War is a classic example.  In the official
media---the _New York Times_, CBS, and so on---in fact, all
across the spectrum except at the very periphery, there was a
lively debate.  It was between people called ``doves'' and people
called ``hawks.''  The people called hawks said, ``If we keep at
it we can win.''  The people called doves said, ``Even if we keep
at it we probably can't win, and besides, it would probably be
too costly for us, and besides maybe we're killing too many
people.''

Both sides, the doves and the hawks, agreed on something: we have
a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam.  In fact,
they didn't even admit that aggression was taking place.  They
called the war the ``defense'' of South Vietnam, using
``defense'' for ``aggression'' in the standard Orwellian manner.
We were in fact attacking South Vietnam just as much as the
Russians are attacking Afghanistan.

Like the Russians in Afghanistan, we first had to establish a
government in Vietnam that would invite us in, and until we found
one we had to overturn government after government.  Finally we
got one that invited us in, after we'd been there attacking the
countryside and the population for years.  That's aggression.
Nobody thought that was wrong, or rather, anyone who thought it
was wrong was not admitted to the discussion.

If this were a totalitarian state, the Ministry of Truth would
simply have said, ``It's right for us to go into Vietnam.  Don't
argue with it.''  People would have recognized that as the
propaganda system, and they would have thought what they wanted.
They could have seen that we were attacking Vietnam, just like we
can see that the Russians are attacking Afghanistan.

In this country, you can't permit people to understand that level
of reality.  It's too dangerous.  People are much freer, they can
express themselves.  Therefore it's necessary to try to control
thought, to try to make it appear as if the only issue was a
tactical one: can we get away with it.  There was no issue of
right or wrong.


``Down the memory hole''

During the Vietnam War, it worked partially but not entirely.
Among educated people it worked very well.  Many studies show
that among the more educated parts of the population, the
government's propaganda was accepted unquestioningly.

On the other hand, after a long period of spontaneous popular
opposition, dissent, and organization, the general population got
out of control.  As recently as 1982, according to the latest
polls I've seen, over 70% of Americans still thought the war was,
quoting the Gallup poll, ``fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a
mistake.''  That is, the overwhelming majority of the population
is neither hawks nor doves, but opposed to aggression.

One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated
than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they
receive more propaganda.  Another is that they're the commissars.
They have jobs as agents of propaganda, and they believe it.  By
and large, they're part of the privileged elite, and share their
interests and perceptions.

The rest of the population is more marginalized.  It doesn't
participate in the democratic system, which is overwhelmingly an
elite game.  People learn from their own lives to be skeptical,
and in fact most of them are.  In this case there's even a name
for the erosion of belief.  It's called the ``Vietnam Syndrome,''
a grave disease: people understand too much.

Yet if you pick up a book on American history and look at the
Vietnam War, there is no such event as the American attack on
South Vietnam.  It's out of history, down Orwell's memory hole.


``Accuracy in Media''

Let me give one more example---the major vote on contra aid in
March 1986.  For the three months prior to the vote, the
administration was heating up the atmosphere, trying to reverse
the Congressional restrictions on aid to the terrorist army
that's attacking Nicaragua.

(Publicly, the contras are called freedom fighters, but internal
documents describe them as a proxy force based on terrorists.  So
I'll call them by the accurate internal terms.)

I was interested in how the media was going to respond to the
administration campaign for the contras.  So I took the two
national newspapers, the _Washington Post_ and the _New York
Times_.  In January, February, and March, I went through every
one of their editorials, opinion pieces, and the columns written
by their own columnists.  There were eighty-five pieces.  Of the
85, 85 were anti-Sandinista.  On that issue, no discussion was
tolerable.  85 out of 85 followed the party line: Sandinistas are
bad guys.

Now there are two very striking facts about the Sandinista
government, as compared with our allies in Central
America---Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.  One is that the
Sandinista government doesn't slaughter its population.  That's
not open to discussion.  That's a fact.

Second, Nicaragua is the only one of those countries in which the
government has tried to direct services to the poor, has in fact
diverted resources to social reform.  Again that's not a matter
of debate; it is conceded on all sides to be true.  You can read
about it in the Inter-American Development Bank reports or
anywhere you like.

On the other hand, our allies Guatemala and El Salvador are among
the world's worst terrorist states.  So far in the 1980's they
have slaughtered over 150,000 of their own citizens, with U.S.
support and enthusiasm.  They are simply violent terrorist
states.  They don't do anything for their population except kill
them.

Honduras is a little different.  In Honduras there's a government
of the rich that robs the poor.  It doesn't kill on the scale of
its major allies, but a large part of the population is starving
to death.

So in examining those 85 editorials, the next thing I looked for
was how often those two facts about Nicaragua were mentioned.  I
discovered that the fact that the Sandinistas are radically
different from our allies in that they don't slaughter their
population was not mentioned once.  The fact that they have
carried out social reforms for the poor was referred to in two
phrases, both sort of buried. Two phrases in 85 columns on one
crucial issue, zero phrases in 85 columns on another.  That's
really remarkable discipline.


``State of siege''

After that I went through all the editorials in the _New York
Times_ from 1980 to the present---just editorials---on El
Salvador and Nicaragua.  It's essentially the same story.

For example, in Nicaragua on October 15, 1985 the government
instituted a state of siege.  This is a country under attack by
the regional superpower, and it did what we did in the Second
World War in Hawaii, instituted a state of siege.  Not too
surprising.  There was a huge uproar, editorials, denunciations,
it shows that they're totalitarian Stalinist monsters, and so on.

Two days after that, on October 17, El Salvador renewed its state
of siege.  This is a state of siege that was instituted in March
1980 and had been renewed monthly since, and it's far more harsh
than the Nicaraguan state of siege.  It blocks freedom of
expression, freedom of movement, virtually all civil rights.
It's the framework within which the army we organized has carried
out massive torture and slaughter.  They're still doing it, in
fact, all you have to do is look at the latest Amnesty
International report.

The _New York Times_ considered the Nicaraguan state of siege a
great atrocity.  The Salvadoran state of siege, far harsher in
its measures and its application, literally was not mentioned.
Furthermore, it has never been mentioned.  There is not one word
in about 160 editorials that mentions it, because that's our
guys, so we can't talk about it.  They're a budding democracy, so
they can't be having a state of siege.

In fact, according to the editorial comment and the news reports
on El Salvador, Duarte is heading a moderate centrist government
under attack by terrorists of the left and terrorists of the
right.  This is complete nonsense.  Every human rights
investigation, the church in El Salvador, even the government
itself in its own secret documents, concedes that the terrorism
is being carried out by government itself.  The death squads are
the security forces.  Duarte is simply a front for terrorists.
But you can't say that publicly.  It gives the wrong image.


``Word Management (or) In the Higher Interest''

Many terms in political discourse are used in a technical sense
that's very much divorced from their actual meaning, sometimes
even the opposite of it.

Take the ``national interest.''  The term is commonly used as if
it's something good for all of us.  If a political leader says,
``I'm doing this in the national interest,'' you're supposed to
feel good because that's for you.

But if you look closely, it turns out that the national interest
is not defined as the interest of the entire population.  It's
really the interests of small, dominant elites who command the
resources that enable them to control the state---basically,
corporate-based elites.  Correspondingly, the ``special
interests,'' of whom we're all supposed to be suspicious, really
refer to the general population.

This became very clear during the last few presidential
campaigns.  President Reagan is largely a figment of the public
relations industry, and the public relations aspects of it,
including control over language, are very striking.  Every choice
of terms by the Reagan public relations machine was carefully
crafted.

In both the 1980 and 1984 elections, Reagan and his handlers
identified the Democrats as the ``party of special interests.''
That's bad, because we're all against the special interests.  But
if you asked who the special interests were, they listed women,
poor people, workers, young people, old people, ethnic
minorities---in fact, the vast majority of the population.  One
group was not listed among the special interests---the
corporations.  In the campaign rhetoric, that was never a special
interest, and in their terms that's right---because that's the
national interest.


[SIDEBAR] ``Censoring Chomsky: Kid Glove, Iron Fist''

Because Noam Chomsky ventures outside the boundaries of
acceptable thought, his work suffers not only the automatic
neglect that he says characterizes our propaganda system, but
also outright suppression.  Though he is obviously a thorough
researcher and an articulate writer, Chomsky has been forced to
publish most of his works with small-circulation presses.  They
are then resoundingly ignored by mainstream reviewers.

This systematic silence was nearly broken and then forcibly
reestablished in the early 70's.  Warner Modular Publications,
Inc., a subsidiary of Warner Communications, signed a contract
with Chomsky and Edward S. Herman for a book called
Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and in
Propaganda.

The manuscript was written and accepted, twenty thousand copies
of the book were printed, an ad for it was placed in the _New
York Review of Books_, and a promotion flyer listing it was
prepared by the publisher.  Then the parent company caught a
whiff.  Warner's William Sarnoff, offended by the book's
criticism of the U.S.  government, ordered that publication not
take place.

The president of the Warner subsidiary, Claude McCaleb, resisted
the edict from above, then tried to find a compromise.  But
Warner Communications was interested only in getting rid of the
book.  McCaleb and those on his staff who supported him were soon
fired; the subsidiary itself was dissolved.

In France, the incident became a minor _cause celebre_.  In the
United States, _au contraire_.  Despite efforts by Chomsky and
Herman to bring this act of censorship and suppression to the
attention of prominent journalists and columnists, it was never
discussed in the mainstream press.

			      * * *

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