Ubiquitous complicity: Wise words on the new propaganda

From Zinovy Zinik, "Ubiquitous complicity," The Times Literary Supplement (September 6, 2013), p. 18

The word "propaganda" is commonly identified with an anonymous state machine -- ideologically sinister as in Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany or Mao's China; as manipulative as the brainwashing by corporate advertising in the West; as nationalistic as authoritariasm from Iraq to Turkmenistan. But, paradoxically, the more ubiquitous and crass the state or corporate propaganda, the less it affects the personal lives of its subjects. The eye gets used to banners with party slogans or commercial images on advertising boards, regarding them simply as a backdrop, like the unavoidable noise in traffic. This type of propaganda is knowingly directed from above, by the state trying to influence the public, as happened for example with the propaganda about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Recently, though, we have witnesses the emergence of a propaganda phenomenon of the opposite character, when both the public and the state are influenced collectively by mass media and social networks. This happens when an idealistic vocabulary (democracy, equality, freedom, revolution) is enthusiastically misapplied in a complex and controversial political situation, the true nature of which is obscure to the general public, to journalists and to the government, all subjected to daily bombardments of graphic images of violence. ... [S]hould this be regarded as self-generated propaganda [?]

Image from

***

A personal note

As someone who served as a U.S. diplomat in Eastern Europe during the later Cold War, I cannot agree more with Mr. Zinik's astute comment that "paradoxically, the more ubiquitous and crass the state or corporate propaganda, the less it affects the personal lives of its subjects."

Indeed, I would extend this wise statement by noting the essential message of this 20th century totalitarian propaganda was that its main purpose was not to have a message -- but rather its aim was to create, essentially, silence --  a "non-message": that power need not to "communicate" with the powerless at all. That's what I get out of reading 1984 -- and living in Eastern Europe under communist and post-communist regimes.

As for today, in all parts of the world, we are infiltrated with propaganda, except that perhaps we live under the social-media illusion that power (increasingly undefined; social media seldom have an identifiable "source") does, in fact, wish to "communicate." If the powerful twitter, that means they (ok, an all-too-vague term) want to "communicate" with you. Oh, yeah? Get real ...

But even greater food for thought, as suggested by Zinik and Stanley B. Cunningham's The Idea of Propaganda: A Reconstruction (2002) (cited at): The "source" of propaganda and "its target audience" are increasingly blurred; the propagandists and those being propagandized are part of the same "universe," creating a totally unreal, if not incestuous, world.

Welcome to 2084!