Propaganda and Censorship: How America Dominates Information War
© AFP 2023 ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
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S.L. Kanthan, a geopolitical analyst, in a column for Sputnik India uncovers American propaganda tactics and describes how the US uses media to influence global perceptions.
Recently, US media have published several articles about India, accusing the Modi government of social media censorship, influence operations, stifling critics, and running troll farms. Western organizations have also downgraded India’s freedom of press this year – with a ranking of 161 out of 180, according to the World Press Freedom Index. Interestingly, such criticisms themselves are tools of the American Empire, whose propaganda machine is so sophisticated that most people don’t even see it. Understanding how the US wages information war and maintains its soft power is very critical. Let’s dive into it.
History of American Propaganda
For more than a century, the US has understood and fine-tuned mass psychology better than anyone else. It started with Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud. While Freud focused on individuals, Bernays pioneered the field of modern public relations – i.e., manufacturing consent, and manipulating the entire society. His seminal book, Propaganda starts off thus:
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of," the book read.
Bernays applied his principles equally to the corporate world, politics, and wars. For example, a cigarette company, Lucky Strikes, approached him in 1929 for help in expanding their business. Bernays organized a protest by wealthy women who marched while smoking in New York City. He reframed smoking as women’s liberation, and had the media describe it as “torches of freedom.” Within days, women all across the US were gathering to smoke in public.
Bernays used his techniques to help US Presidents win election and wage wars. An illustrative example is how Bernays helped the CIA stage a coup in Guatemala in the 1950s. Much of the land in Guatemala was owned by American firms like United Fruit Company, which ruthlessly exploited the workers. Thus, when a popular and democratically elected Guatemalan leader, Jacobo Árbenz, wanted to enact land reforms and improve the conditions of his people, he was targeted by the US.
Bernays helped the CIA launch a propaganda campaign, which accused Arbenz of being a communist who colluded with the Soviet Union and threatened America’s security. This helped drum up public support in the US for a regime change operation. The CIA even launched a radio station in Guatemala to spread fake news and foment an uprising. Soon, the US invaded Guatemala and installed a brutal dictator, who banned labor unions, committed mass murder, and sold off his country to American corporations.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is shown in the lobby of the CIA headquarters in La..
© Jason Reed
Brutality of American Empire
The Guatemalan playbook has been utilized many times in Latin America, where almost every country has been a victim of invasions or coups orchestrated by the USA. Shockingly, the USA even established the “School of Americas” to train Latin American soldiers and military generals on political oppression, police state, death squads, torture, psychological warfare, and other means to maintain totalitarian systems.
After WW2, the CIA even established ratlines for thousands of high-ranking Nazis to flee to South/Central America, where the Nazis played a key role in maintaining the Monroe Doctrine – i.e., US domination of the Western Hemisphere. An infamous Nazi in this role is Klaus Barbie – also known as the Butcher of Lyon – who established right-wing paramilitary groups such as the “Fiancés of Death” in Bolivia, staged coups to install US-friendly fascist leaders, killed “communists” who would impede profits of American corporations, and even helped the CIA with massive cocaine trafficking.
There are countless such stories in Africa and Asia as well. The US has armed, funded and supported a vast majority of dictators and fascists around the world. In an Orwellian manner, the only time a leader is guaranteed to be accused of a dictator is if he refuses to obey the diktats of the USA. Otherwise, the mainstream media ignores the sins of such leaders, who can even come to the White House for a photo op. More egregiously, the US gladly funds and arms violent militants, neo-Nazi mercenaries (like in Ukraine), Islamist jihadists, drug cartels etc. to overthrow governments around the world. Finally, the US also organizes color revolutions and soft coups to remove independent leaders and install puppet leaders.
So, the obvious question is how does the US get away with all this? More importantly, how does the US maintain its global brand as a country that fights for freedom and democracy? It is imperative that every person understand this highly sophisticated combination of capital, technology and psychology that underpins American propaganda.
Activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party clash with police officers during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023.
© AP Photo / Mahmud Hossain Opu
Three Pillars of American Propaganda
While propaganda within a selected group or even a country is somewhat easy, global propaganda at scale requires a much bigger arsenal of diverse weapons. The three pillars of American propaganda are:
Dominance of tools. These include traditional mediums such as newspapers, magazines, books, academics, TV, movies, music and so on. Then there are modern tools such as social media, Wikipedia, and Google Search. This virtual monopoly allows the US to flood the world with American perspectives and drown out competition. The West gets to write the history and define truth.
Consistent Messaging. While the US media pretends to be independent, it’s an important branch of the US establishment. While the media criticize the politicians on different domestic issues, they are always in-sync with the imperialist side of the USA. During the illegal war on Iraq, the media shamelessly repeated all the lies from the US military and deep state. Perhaps 1 in 1000 mainstream media articles gently question the war propaganda of the military industrial complex. In the 1970s, the US Senate exposed Operation Mockingbird, which was the CIA’s scheme to have agents or collaborators in all the influential American media. That arrangement is still alive.
Targeted Censorship: Most people don’t see censorship in the US because the average person can go on Twitter or Facebook and post some rude things about the US or its leaders. However, what these people don’t realize is that if they are influential, they would be censored in numerous ways.
Let’s analyze each one of them in more details.
Domination of mainstream narrative around the world by the US and its allies is astounding. Reuters and AP provide the foreign news to most countries, who lack the capacity to have worldwide journalists. The US also has hundreds of influential magazines and newspapers, which mold the perceptions of people on economics, geopolitics, social values, and virtually all topics. Wherever you travel, you can find CNN on TV screens at hotels and airport. In India, the #1 English TV channel is CNN.
Of course, Hollywood plays as big a role as the news media when it comes to manipulating the masses. The Pentagon and the CIA work closely with Hollywood to insert inconspicuous propaganda into movies and TV shows to portray the US as the freedom-loving hero and geopolitical rivals as bad – compare Superman, Spiderman and James Bond to the countless villains with Russian accent.
The US government and corporations – especially the military contractors – also fund numerous think tanks in the US and around the world to shape the opinions of influencers, academics, bureaucrats, and the educated class. Moreover, ruling classes from around the world send their children to study in the US/UK, thus indoctrinating the future generation with a narrow and distorted view of the world.
The US also spends a lot of money on fake NGOs that train journalists and activists, who will unsurprisingly turn out to be pro-US.
The West also controls, in indirect ways, textbooks and curriculum around the world. Whether it’s Germany or India, you will not find a high-school or college course on “American Imperialism.” A shocking example of this brainwashing is Hong Kong’s young generation, which grew up worshipping the British and never learning about the true nature of British colonialism and apartheid in Hong Kong. Sadly, these kids were also taught to hate mainland Chinese people.
Finally, all this American “wisdom” is magnified through American technology and propaganda tools such as Google Search and Wikipedia.
To summarize, the US floods the world with their propaganda through every channel possible. A person needs to be really dedicated to sift through the flood of disinformation to seek the truth. Vast majority of people don’t have the time, money or patience to go beyond the headlines, mainstream talking points, or the second page of Google Search results.
Next is consistency. Incredibly, all the channels we discussed above stick to the US establishment propaganda. This happens in a supposedly land of free speech and free press. As Noam Chomsky said, “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.”
There are three more characteristics to American propaganda, which makes it very effective:
They are simple.
They are emotional.
They are repeated endlessly.
American propaganda is the same whether they are selling Nike or politicians or neoliberal economics or wars. They are summarized in catchy slogans: “Just do it” … “free market and small government” … “Make America Great Again” … “spreading freedom and democracy.”
They are also emotional. Whether the lie is about Syrian President Assad using chemical weapons or China brutally killing people in the Tiananmen Square, the narrative is so emotional that people cannot think objectively.
Propaganda is just marketing. Every good commercial has an emotional aspect to it. Thus, while marketers use sexy women to sell Coca Cola, warmongers evoke fear and/or anger to sell war. Thus, portraying Putin as taking over Europe or Xi Jinping taking over Asia are effective in creating fight-or-flight reactions. Americans have also been trained to have Pavlovian response to words such as “dictator” and “Hitler,” which are used against every leader that the US targets. Such simplistic messages are effective, because one can see people on social media mindlessly repeating them like robots.
Look at the favorable view of China in the US. It fell from 53% in 2018 to just 15% in 2023. Think about it. What has China done differently in the last five years? Nothing. All the trade wars and tech wars were started by the US, not by China.
Also, China didn’t build military bases around the US or call the US an adversary. However, suddenly everyone in the US establishment started calling China the “greatest enemy” and “biggest threat.” And people believed it.
US and Chinese flags are seen before a meeting between US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on July 8, 2023
© AFP 2023 MARK SCHIEFELBEIN
That’s the power of American propaganda. It's really stupid, emotional and childish, but works impressively to manufacture consent for wars.
Finally, the American censorship is very clever and takes on numerous forms – for example: demonetization of YouTube accounts, throttling of Twitter accounts (reducing the views), outright ban for thoughtcrimes (which has increased exponentially after the Trump phenomenon in 2016), firing people from jobs (the CEO of a tech company was recently fired for retweeting a satire article about Israel bombing Gaza) and so on.
Journalists such as Chris Hedges who spoke out against the Iraq war have been ostracized forever. Others such as John Mearsheimer who have blamed NATO expansion for antagonizing Russia are just politely ignored by mainstream media. However, people like Scott Ritter and Pepe Escobar, who speak too much truth, have been permanently banned from most social media platforms. Russia’s RT America was shut down in the US; and all Russian media have been banned in Europe. US media even attacks expats who live in China and share their positive views about China – because, if you are not vehemently spewing anti-China narratives, you are a propagandist.
As a personal anectdote, I got permanently banned from Medium for simply writing a factual article that questioned the outrageous U.S. allegations of Uyghur genocide by China. When the UN Human Rights group – led by Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile – went to Xinjiang and later published a report that said nothing about genocide, US politicians went berserk and attacked her viciously. Soon, she amended the report to add one line that crimes against humanity “may” have occurred. Then, she resigned.
Similarly, when the ICC wanted to look into American war crimes, the US threatened to arrest the ICC judges. Later, the US bullied the ICC to get rid of the chief judge, installed a puppet, and then indicted Russian President Putin on fake charges. The hypocrisy and duplicity are astonishing. By the way, the US did the same with the UN inspectors when they said that Iraq had no nuclear weapons two decades ago.
Julian Assange, of course, is the ultimate example of US censorship. All Wikileaks did was to publish 100% authentic documents, which exposed how the world works. However, the US empire went berserk, framed him with false rape allegations, trapped him in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, had the UK psychologically torture him in prison, and even tried to kill him. And he is not even an American.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange leaves in a prison van after appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, for an administrative hearing in London, Monday, Jan. 13, 2020
© AP Photo / Alberto Pezzali
Conclusion
“Perception is reality” is a famous American saying. When applied excessively, this principle would lead to an insane society detached from reality. And, in a way, that is exactly what is happening in the US.
Americans do not realize that they live in an oligarchic and kleptocratic system where politicians are bought and paid for by large corporations. Thus, Americans keep falling for fake elections and staged drama, even though the life of an average American has gotten worse consistently over the last five decades. Similarly, Americans keep supporting perpetual wars and a vast empire of 800 international military bases, because they naively believe the recycled war propaganda.
There is definitely more awakening in the rest of the world, especially in the Global South. People are starting to see through American propaganda and disinformation, as evidenced in the world’s recent support for Russia and Palestinians. However, more people need to wake up, especially Europeans. The next decade will be dangerous for the world, since the rulers of the US will try every imperialist trick to destroy their geopolitical competitors and prolong the American unipolar hegemony. Be prepared for intense propaganda wars.
11 December 2023, 13:19
