PROPAGANDA (quotations and observations; from John Brown)
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I'd be glad to share the full syllabus for my course at Georgetown,
"Propaganda and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Historical Overview."
My email is john.h30@gmail.com
My email is john.h30@gmail.com
“Why Lie When You Can Spin?”
--Columnist Clarence Page, regarding Pentagon paid-for news; “When Press Is Paid to Lie, the Truth Always Comes out, Chicago Tribune (December 4, 2004); see below item 23
‘We must accept propaganda as a major weapon of policy, tactical as well as strategic, and begin to conduct it on modern and realist line.”
--George F. Kennan; cited in Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (2006), p. 38
"When you are persuaded by something, you don't think it is propaganda."
--Stanford psychologist Lee D. Ross; cited in Shankar Vedantam, “Two Views of the Same News Find Opposite Biases,” The Washington Post (July 24, 2006)
“The reason I tell you the truth is so that when I lie, you will believe me.”
--An unnamed information warrior; cited in Daniel Schulman, “Mind Games,” Columbia Journalism Review (2006)
“[T]he images of [Saddam’s] execution and his body seem to point to a new era in the way images are used politically, what might be called a post-propaganda era. So many images that were supposed to have such profound impact on public perception -- the now infamous ‘Mission Accomplished ’photo op or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's bloody head tastefully framed for the cameras -- have failed to connect with the reality of either public opinion, or the facts on the ground. This image means progress, we're told, but there isn't any progress. This image is a final chapter, but the blood still flows. For a public media campaign to work, at least some of the politically calculated captions placed on images must, in the end, turn out to be true.”
--Philip Kennicott, “For Saddam's Page In History, A Final Link On Youtube,” The Washington Post (December 30, 2006)
“‘[Senator] Fulbright had outspokenly opposed international propaganda in our government. When he coldly queried [USIA Director Leonard] Marks on the meaning of propaganda, Marks replied respectfully, "If I say you are chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that's a fact; whereas if I say you are the finest chairman in the history of the Senate, that's propaganda." Fulbright shot back: "No, you're wrong -- that’s a fact!’"
--Cited in Fitzhugh Green, American Propaganda Abroad (1988), p. 54
“[Propaganda] came to be used by English and Continental writers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when some who were anticlerical and anti-Catholic identified this type of material with the publications of the [De Propaganda Fide]." "Propagating the faith" was judged by these writers as sheer "propaganda." However, the term lost its original connection with anti-Catholicism, and it is currently used to identify the vast body of political, partisan, and high-pressure mass communication designed to promote persons or causes in the modern world.”
--Catholic Encyclopedia (1966)
“John Adams... commented that revolutionary propagandists ‘tinge the mind of the people; they impregnate them with the sentiments of liberty; they render the people fond of their leaders in the causes, and averse and bitter against all opposers.’"
--Halsey Ross, Propaganda for War, p. 1, quoting John C. Miller, Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda (1936), p. 113.
“Nothing but defeat in war will suffice to produce any change not desired by those who control publicity.”
--Philosopher Bertrand Russell, "Government by Propaganda,” in the volume These Eventful Years: The Twentieth Century in the Making as Told by Many of Its Makers; Being the Dramatic Story of All That Has Happened Throughout the World during the Most Momentous Period of All History; with 160 Full-Page Illustrations and Numerous Maps (London: The Encyclopedia Britannica Company, Ltd.; New York, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1924), p. 383.
“The war to make the world safe for democracy made democracy unsafe for America
--Federal Judge Hon. George W. Anderson (1920); cited in George Sylvester Vierek, Spreading Germs of Hate (1930), p. 279
“In the year 1915, the enemy started his propaganda among our soldiers. From 1916 it steadily became more intensive and at the beginning of 1918, it had swollen into a storm cloud. One could see the effects of this gradual seduction. Our soldiers learned to think the way the enemy wanted them to think.”
--Adolph Hitler; cited in Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Nuclear Age (1990), p. 172.
“I cannot convince a single person of the necessity of something unless I get to know the soul of that person, unless I understand how to pluck the string in the harp of his soul that must be made to sound.”
--Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels; cited in Richard Taylor, “Goebbels and the Function of Propaganda,” in David Welch, Nazi Propaganda: The Power and the Limitations (1983), p. 38.
“The injection of the poison of hatred into men’s minds by means of falsehood is a greater evil in wartime than the actual loss of life. The defilement of the human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body.”
--Lord Ponsonby (1926); cited in cited in Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Nuclear Age (1990), p. 179.
“News is the shocktroops of propaganda”
--Sir John Reith, cited in Philip M. Taylor, “The New Propaganda Boom,” The International History Review (Volume II, Number 3, July 1980), p. 498.
“The other day there was put into my hand a circular issued from the War Office asking officers to supply articles and stories for propaganda purposes showing admirable qualities of our troops and the bad qualities of the Germans. …. After telling what is wanted this amazing instruction is given: ‘Essential not literal truth and correctness are necessary. Inherent probability being respected the thing imagined may be as serviceable as the thing seen.’”
--Ramsay MacDonald, in a statement (1918) to the organ of the Scottish Independent Labour Party concerning British propaganda; cited in Ralph Haswell Lutz, "Studies of World War Propaganda, 1914-1933,” The Journal of Modern History, Volume 5, Issue 4 (December, 1933), p. 511
“It is difficult to suggest by what means diplomacy can mitigate the dangers of this terrible invention.”
--Sir Harold Nicolson, regarding propaganda; cited in his Diplomacy (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1988), p. 93.
“Now, by the press, we can speak to nations; and good books and well written pamphlets have great and general influence. The facility with which the same truths may be repeatedly enforced by placing them in different lights in newspapers, which are everywhere read, gives a great chance of establishing them. And we now find that it is not only right to strike while the iron is hot but that it may be very practicable to heat it by continually striking.”
--Benjamin Franklin; cited in Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Nuclear Age (1990),” pp. 117-118.
“It is necessary for America to have agents in different parts of Europe, to give some information concerning our affairs, and to refute the abominable lies that the hired emissaries of Great Britain circulate in every corner of Europe , by which they keep up their own credit and ruin ours."
--John Adams; cited in above, p. 118.
“After all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but the truth in masquerade.”
--Lord Byron, cited in John Hargrave, Words Win Wars (1940), p. 37.
"We were hypnotized by the enemy propaganda as a rabbit is by a snake."
--Erich Ludendorff, Germany's chief strategist during World War I, cited in David Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914-1918 (2000),
p. 250
“Propaganda is the penalty we pay for democracy.”
--George Vierek, Spreading Germs of Hate (1930), p. 34
“...furious Propaganda, with her brand,
Fires the dry prairies of our wide Waste Land
Making the Earth, Man's temporal station, be
One stinking altar to Publicity.”
--L. W. Dodd, "The Great Enlightenment," in The Great Enlightenment: A Satire in Verse: With Other Selected Verses (1928), p. 44., cited in Alfred McClung Lee How to Understand Propaganda (1952), p. 19.
“[Propaganda was], as one official wrote in 1928, ' a good word gone wrong.’”
-- K. R. M. Short, ed., Film and Radio Propaganda in World War II (1983), p. 25
“We look
But at the surface of things; we hear
Of towns in flames, fields ravaged, young and old
Driven out in troops to want and nakedness;
Then grasp our sword and rush upon a cure
That flatters us, because it asks not thought;
The deeper malady is better hid
The world is poisoned at the heart.”
--Wordsworth, The Borderers, Act I, quoted in James Morgan Read, Atrocity Propaganda 1914-1919, no page
“Propaganda is nothing but a fancy name for publicity, and who knows the publicity game better than the Yanks? Why, the Germans make no bones about admitting that they learned the trick from us. Now the difference between a Boche and a Yank is just this – which a Boche is some one [sic] who believes everything that’s told him and a Yank is some one who disbelieves everything that’s told him. The Boche believes all this rubbish his own government has been telling him; see how he swallows a few facts. Boy, bring me a German printing press and four airplanes.”
--Stars and Stripes, January 3, 1919, cited in Captain Heber Blankenhorn, Adventures in Propaganda, p. 162
“Formerly the rulers were the leaders. They laid out the course of history, by the simple process of doing what they wanted. And if nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval. Therefore, propaganda is here to stay.”
--Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928), p. 27
“Propaganda is an instrument; it may employ truth instead of falsehood in its operation (as Wilson
--Elmer Davis, "War Information," in Daniel Lerner, ed., Propaganda in War and Crisis: Materials for American Policy (1951), p. 276
“But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another.”
--Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1950), p. 26
“Propaganda is made first of all, because of a will to action, for the purpose of effectively arming policy and giving irresistible power to its decisions.”
--Jacque Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1966), p. x
"Propaganda, as a technique for 'controlling attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols [is] no more moral or immoral than a pump handle.'"
--Harold Lasswell, as quoted by Brett Gary, The Nervous Liberals: Propaganda Anxieties from World War I to the Cold War (1999), p. 64
“Hitler maintained that in Britain propaganda was regarded ‘as a weapon of the first order, while in our country it was the last resort of unemployed politicians and a haven for slackers.’"
--David Welch , Germany
"The cure for propaganda is more propaganda."
--Bruce Bliven, quoted by Edward Bernays (page not shown) in Doob, Propaganda: Its Psychology and Technique (1935), p. 197
“The deadliest danger of propaganda consists of its being used by the propagandist for his own edification.”
--Wallace Carroll, Persuade or Perish (1948), p. 7
"If you're imperially-minded, which the Americans were at the time [60s, Cold War], you don't think much about whether it's wrong or not [being part of the propaganda "aparat"]. It's like the imperial British in the Nineteenth Century. You just do it."
--Stuart Hampshire, quoted in Frances Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999), pp. 378-79
"'What is truly vicious' observed the New York Times in an editorial on September 1 1937, 'is not propaganda but a monopoly of it.'"
--Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, eds., The Fine Art of Propaganda (1939), p. 18
''The way to carry out propaganda is never to appear to be carrying it out at all."
--Richard Crossman, quoted in Frances Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999) introduction, no page [p. 1]
“War propaganda is a shell in which the truth rattles around somewhere. Journalists try, with varying degrees of success, to find it among the din of false echoes. Governments try to impose their meaning on the noise.”
-- Anne McEvoy, The Independent (October 10, 2001), p. 3
“More than forty years ago, I was a pioneer in radio, a sports announcer. And I found myself broadcasting major league baseball games from telegraphed reports. I was not at the stadium…
Now, if the game was rather dull, you could say, 'It’s a hard-hit ball down toward second base. The shortstop is going over after the ball and makes a wild stab, picks it up, turns and gets him out just in time.’
Now, I submit to you that I told the truth, if he was out from shortstop to first, and I don’t know whether he really ran over toward second base and whether he really made a one-handed stab, or whether he just squatted down and took the ball when it came to him. But the truth got there, and in other words, it can be attractively packaged.”
--Ronald Reagan, speaking at the Voice of America’s fortieth anniversary ceremonies, Washington D.C., February 24, 1982; cited in Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of Disinformation: American Propaganda, Soviet Lies, and the Winning of the Cold War (1995), n.p.
"’Terrorism is fundamentally propaganda, a bloody form of propaganda,’
Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp; cited in The Washington Post, (October 11, 2001) p. A8
“Maybe we're losing that battle for Afghan hearts and minds in part because the Bush State Department appointee in charge of the propaganda effort is a C.E.O. (from Madison Avenue) chosen not for her expertise in policy or politics but for her salesmanship on behalf of domestic products like Head & Shoulders shampoo. If we can't effectively fight anthrax, I guess it's reassuring to know we can always win the war on dandruff.”
--Frank Rich. The New York Times (October 27, 2001)
“The administration is proclaiming American ideals for all to hear -- and is fighting a propaganda war against al-Jazeera television, a transnational satellite network...To succeed in the propaganda war, for example, it is not enough to say you are fighting terrorists and not Muslims, and it is not enough to help Afghans with food packages. To succeed in winning hearts and minds, you also need to rein in human-rights abuses by your new allies, such as Uzbekistan
--Sebastian Malaby, "Practical Idealism," The Washington Post (October 22, 2001)
"A new and serious problem of modern diplomacy is the problem of propaganda. In the days of the old diplomacy it would have been regarded as an act of unthinkable vulgarity to appeal to common people upon any issue of international policy. It was Canning, in 1812, who first recognized the efficacy of what he called 'the fatal artillery of popular excitation.’... Even the British (who are a truthful race) gradually acquired a taste for propaganda, and proved that they also could tell deliberate lies. ...
It is difficult to suggest what means diplomacy can mitigate the dangers of this terrible invention [propaganda]. International agreements on the subject are evaded or ignored; counter-propaganda only intensifies the conflict. The most that can be hoped is that the very virulence of the method, the actual iteration of demonstrable untruths, may in the end defeat its own purpose. And that the best antidote to the hysterical school of broadcasters is a policy of truth, under-statement and calm."
--Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (1988 edition), pp. 92-93
It is difficult to suggest what means diplomacy can mitigate the dangers of this terrible invention [propaganda]. International agreements on the subject are evaded or ignored; counter-propaganda only intensifies the conflict. The most that can be hoped is that the very virulence of the method, the actual iteration of demonstrable untruths, may in the end defeat its own purpose. And that the best antidote to the hysterical school of broadcasters is a policy of truth, under-statement and calm."
--Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (1988 edition), pp. 92-93
“The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”
--Elmer Davis; cited in Andrew Glas, “Roosevelt creates Office of War Information, June 13, 1942,” Politico June (13, 2011)
“The ‘bad guys’ do not need to produce their own propaganda when we do it for them.”
--US Diplomat Peter Van Buren, writing in his blog, We Meant Well (January 12, 2012) http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2012/01/12/hip-hop-coin-diplomacy-awww-pss-on-it/
“You can't propagandize on social media. I just don’t think propaganda works on social media at all.”
--The Secretary of State’s Senior Advisor for Innovation Alec Ross, tweeting on americagov http://twitter.com/americagov
--The Secretary of State’s Senior Advisor for Innovation Alec Ross, tweeting on americagov http://twitter.com/americagov
"What over the years, over the 70-odd years of VOA's history we have learned, is that -- and I say this often to people who say why aren't you hitting harder on the ayatollahs in Iran or something like that -- I say, look, the best answer to propaganda is not more propaganda. It is truth. We're in the truth business at the Voice of America. We may not get it a hundred percent right all the time, but that's always our goal. That is our goal."
--VOA director David Ensor as interviewed by host Shaka Ssali Straight Talk Africa, 9 Jan 2013
"Even in the actual contact of human relations, at meetings, in door-to-door visits, the propagandist is… nothing else and nothing more than a representative of the organization—or, rather, a delegated fraction of it.... His words are no longer human words but technically calculated words.... In the very act of pretending to speak as man to man, the propagandist is reaching the summit of his mendacity and falsifications…."
-- Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1973), pp. 23-24.
“Propaganda should not be obvious; propaganda should be hidden — then and only then can it be effective ... We need to make it clear to students that when they leave this building, they are going to go work for The Man. And The Man is going to tell them what to write and what not to write, and how to write about this or that. And The Man has a right to do this because he is paying them. … You may like what I have told you or not, but it’s objective reality. It’s life. And it’s not like you are ever going to see a different life.”
--Alexei Volin, deputy minister of communications and mass media, a keynote speaker at a conference called “Journalism in 2012: The Profession and Its Function in Society,” held atMoscow University
--Alexei Volin, deputy minister of communications and mass media, a keynote speaker at a conference called “Journalism in 2012: The Profession and Its Function in Society,” held at
Note: The Encyclopedia Britannica (1911 edition) does not have “Propaganda” as an entry; the 1997 edition has nine-page coverage of the subject.
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