Propaganda theory. Chapter 2

Here’s the second chapter of my propaganda textbook for you. We continue learning to read news between the lines.

“Don’t talk” Soviet time poster. “Stay attentive, in days like those the walls can hear you. It’s not so far from chat and gossips to betrayal”.

The first article on propaganda theory I published last week. The post is now open only for paid subscribers for obvious reasons. As long as I can’t risk and share publicly quotes on any subjects around Ukraine and Russian conflict or on Russian policy especially on Russian foreign affairs, I will close this article as well. Just in case. I can’t keep myself from analysing polemics in the media and use that as examples demonstrating the methods I write about in use. 

The first technique for today's discussion is…

Goebbels's method or method of multiple repetition

Finally we reached the heritage of a person who’s part in the theory of the propaganda is impossible to overestimate. We remember how the whole country was turned into fascists’ nation and seriously considered their race the higher and the purest with a mission to arrange their new order on the Earth whatever the price was to pay.

Here’s the full quote: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such a time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State”.

The details of that ideology and the difference from stalinism and communism you can learn from the book of Jonathan Little “Les Bienveillantes” (‘The Kindly Ones’). I reviewed it before and I won’t get tired of recommending it. We get back to the theory.

To show the result of such repetition I won’t look into the past for the lies of the anti-Semites or on the subject of intellectual priority of white people. You are well aware of those. The same goes to women's nature discussions or the thoughts on their rights on abortion or the right and wrong of non-binary sexual identification.

Let’s look at the last polls published by The Economist. They wrote: “Our polling reveals a striking generational divide in Ukraine: young people in America and Europe are less sympathetic towards it”.

The research showed that 18-29 y.o Americans (about 44%) are less likely to believe in the intentional “evil” results of Russian invasion, less of them support Ukraine, the most part either don’t support any side or don’t have an opinion. While the most of the 65+ y.o Americans (90%) (the most Europeans as well but in less percentage) are sure that Russia intentionally kills Ukrainians.

The Cold War propaganda wasn’t lost and forgotten. There’s no need to write new ideas, it's enough to remind the old political agenda to those who learned it for years and years. So Biden’s speeches just reanimate the old world vision. Maybe he himself believes in those pictures. Maybe it’s calculated cynicism. But that’s exactly how the old scheme is triggered.

On the Russian side the same mechanism was set into an action mode. Old people are reminded about the enemy behind the border. It’s not the question of ideology anymore - capitalism or socialism. It’s a question of physical opposition, fear of war, injustice. It starts as “do you remember as…” and then any real or invented historical fact can go, no one will try to check the truth, but will remember the feeling of the confrontation the Soviet people had with the West, especially with the USA. I discussed the Russian polls interpretation in Western media already. And not long ago I wrote about the population structure in Russia and the demographic crisis as well, so just check if you find the subject interesting.

Younger generation doesn’t have such experience. That generation was raised as apolitical and only lately woke up to the social responsibilities and environmental activism. The most important agenda for them is rights for sexual minorities, the freedom of their own self-expression, the injustice they’ve learned to determine. They won’t tell the difference between any of the terms the older generations were grown with - from marxism to capitalism. They united into the unions in Amazon or Conde Nast and surprisingly discovered that the same path was chosen by many workers in the end of 19th century and that is how socialism was born as a movement. But the owners of those businesses are surprised as well because their employees are not miners, not sweatshop seamstresses, not child labour. Nevertheless they react in the same way as their predecessors, trying to deny their workers rights. History repeats itself.

As I wrote before this method like any other propaganda techniques is used in many areas and for different purposes - good or bad. It’s the base of the advertising. The price for the campaign is tightly connected with the repetition circles and the volume of the audience. It works for video clips, for music promotion, for slogans and singles. The same messages multiplied by publications in the different magazines promote film premiers, books, celebrities. And political figures as well. Repite thousand times to the audience that “Trump/Putin/Biden/Macron/place any name is an evil/saviour”, and many people will believe in it and the number will grow exponentially after the Nth time. “Quantity will turn into quality”. 

Semi-truths

Goebbels was fond of his idea of a “Big Lie”. He believed that if the lie is too ordinary no one will believe it among normal people, because they used to lie everyday. But if you invent something unimaginable, they can’t believe someone could make such things up, so they believe. The worst lie is the best, because the purpose is its effect. 

Unless the audience is intellectual, because if propaganda becomes obvious it loses its power. Ordinary people don’t use to think too much, according to Goebbels (I hide behind him here). So it’s enough to direct the mass media and repite the same message to turn the most peaceful people into “pigs” (also his word, not mine, but I saw that method in action). The psychology of the crowds is based on manipulation with “crowd intellect”, we really become pretty stupid when we forget to think on our own and follow the trend.

When the crowd isn’t formed yet, there’s a method to dissolve or sum up the facts with false but delicately cut logical conclusions. That works pretty well, for example, for greenwashing campaigns of mass market brands, like Zara, H&M, Nike. Or when the brand should change its colour from white to brownish.

The most awful example of its latest use was the way Bucha victims were revealed to the media and the public, the direction the discussion took from there was perfectly calculated.