Propagandist bastards – Dangerous, Deception the Dark Art of Fake News.

(This Post was originally published in January 2023. With the passing of 12 months, and upon reflection, the warnings contained therein have become even more acute.)

Welcome to 2023! I’m eagerly expecting a year of wonder, interest, frustration, and concerning events. What may come over the horizon? Like taxes, you can count on more political propaganda this year! When did it start? What’s its intent? Who were/are some of the great propagandists of time travel? Does propaganda take many forms? What if any are the defenses against the black arts of propaganda. I’ve been pondering such in between XMAS and New Year festivities. Yes, I know at 60 you would think I had a life!

Make America great again – Powerful dangerous effective propaganda.

November 17, 2012, was a historical day in US history. Donald Trump ‘created’ a slogan that is perhaps the finest expression of propaganda in the contemporary world. Incidentally he stole the concept, who would expect anything else!

MAGA is brilliant as a propaganda slogan. Its simplicity and statement of nothing precise, provide the receiver multiple imagined reference subjects. All the bad evil things in your life, Trump will fix. Taxes, immigrants, talk of climate change, inflation, the Clintons – Trump can fix it. A defining aspect of both propaganda and Fascism is the promise of easy fixes. If only you were to give enough power to those who brought you the enlightenment in the first place!

Surely, a baseball cap could not possibly warn of the threat of the violence inherent in the propaganda system. Well of course it can’t! That’s the point of propaganda. To convince common people to support, allow, and sustain actions which they would otherwise abhor!

People are diverse and complex, nothing more diverse than opinions on the structure of society. Some of those opinions are ugly! Fascists, and their belief that violence is legitimate political discourse. You’re not likely to see that printed on a baseball cap, it wouldn’t fit.

Behaviour never lies – The Winnie defense.

Winston Churchill knew one defense against these dark arts was to watch people’s behaviour, and not listen to their words.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When and where did Propaganda commence its Time Travel?

Origins of Propaganda:

Time travelling back 2538 years to ancient Persia we find King Darius. Darius would bang on with his own version of MAGA – Make Persia Great Again (MPGA), which loses something. I guess the illiterate Trump was lucky America starts with a vowel!

Jumping forward 110 years, we find Pericles in the Acropolis, washing dolmades down with litres of retsina. Prior to the rise of Greece, most people lived under despots. With limited means to represent their political desires as a group. Pericles and his mates were well aware of their group interests. All well informed of the political affairs of their City State. We know Greece as a democracy, but it was a closed shop, excluding women, slaves, non-Greeks and other undesirables. Perhaps Pericles’ propaganda was focused on keeping democracy just the way it benefitted his interest group?

Pericles knew nothing of newspapers, radio, television, LinkedIn and Twitter. But he had public games, theatre, law courts, public oratory, and religious festivals. All of these were used as powerful engines of propaganda to mold attitudes and opinions.

Architecture as Propaganda.

The Greeks were great thinkers, or perhaps it was the retsina. But Pericles realized when the curtain went down on your latest ‘Broadway’ production, well your propaganda went silent. I know, let’s build a huge temple on the highest most expensive land in the city: The Parthenon was born. It’s notable that other great propagandists also chose large architectural monuments to propagandize their message. Christian cathedrals are notable examples as well Hitler’s world capital ‘Germania’.

The Parthenon, built 2450 years before Trump Tower, was intended to show the world the Greeks were strong and brave. In order to serve Pericles’ nationalistic goals, the temple was built on the sacred Acropolis. Seen by anyone approaching the city, permanent glorification of the greatness of Greece. The Parthenon may have survived, but Pericles’s intent for the Greeks did not. The famous Parthenon marbles were knicked by the British in 1812. And the European Union has financially bailed out Greece on more than one occasion. Seems propaganda often does not stand the test of time!

Propaganda and the Ancient World.

My previous Postcard, ‘Lust, Fascists and Arseholes’ discusses the fact that Julius Caesar’s writing was self-seeking propaganda. Roman writing is the primary ancient history which time travelled down to us. Tragically, most of it is Roman self-seeking bull shit, consequently much was lost about other worthy ancient civilizations. Propaganda distorts history, it really is Fake News.

Another Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius did not have the same penchant for self-seeking bollocks. Marcus wrote about Defence Against the Dark Arts (DADA), his writings on stoicism justifiably time travelled down to us. Reason is the greatest defense against propaganda, but the dark arts are sneaky!

Fart jokes and propaganda.

Propaganda was on for young and old with the invention of the printing press in 1450. Several hundred years of mass-produced propaganda followed. As the Protestant Reformers and the Anti Reformation Roman Catholics, slogged it out for righteous dominance. You didn’t think the printing press would have been used to educate the mud eating British peasants, did you?

There does not seem to have been much discipline to 15th Century propaganda. Certainly, a lot of buttock baring, farting jokes, and other schoolboy humour. Seems to be what influenced Donald Trump’s personal propaganda style!

The two world wars elevated propaganda to a studied art form. Propaganda counters and bi-passes logic, reason, rational thought, and common sense: It manipulates emotions. My previous Postcard, ‘Bastard Horse and Scared Young Men’, introduced my Uncle Les, who ran off as a 16-year-old, joined the Australian Light Horse and fought through World War 1. I’m guessing that Les’ ‘adventure’ was inspired by manipulative propaganda:

WW2 – Liars, creeps and other bastards

If WW1 made propaganda an art form, WW2 was the master period. NAZI Germany knew the manipulative magic of the Dark Arts, creating a Government Department run by Joseph Goebbels.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”

Joseph Goebells.

Now this guy was a real creep, couldn’t lie straight in bed! Winston warned us that, “Behaviour never Lies”. True to form, the actual cowardice and brutality of Goebbels was exposed in May 1945. Instead of facing the Russians, he and his darling wife murdered their 5 children and killed themselves.

NAZI propaganda, had at its core a complete disdain for people. But they had thought it through, they knew the psychology upon which it played.

Hitler – An appeal to those of limited intelligence.

The little corporal had no more respect for the people, then Goebbels:

Welcome to the Red Baron’s not so little friend.

Hermann Goering, was no fool, self-seeking, pompous, and arrogant, but clever and calculating. A decorated WW1 Fighter Pilot Ace who flew under command of the Red Baron. When the Baron was shot down by Aussie troops, Fat Boy Goering lead the Baron’s Flying Circus. During the1946 Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, he defended himself effectively against US, Russian and British lawyers. Sentenced to Death by Hanging. True to Churchill’s advice, Hermann also committed suicide.

I imagine Winnie would have chuckled and fired up another Cuban, when he was told of the arrest of Hermann by US military police:

“Hermann was wearing a woman’s silk kimonos, French knickers, long hair, and painted fingernails: He was also completely off his face on morphine.“

US MP Arrest Report Fat Boy not so Slim

Notorious propagandists don’t always come dressed like successful seemingly well-meaning politicians.

Hermann had the usual NAZI distain for the views of the German people. He also speaks to the evil power of propaganda:

I seek not to be an apologist for old fat boy Hermann. But as an example, that evil propaganda is not just the tactic of ignorant sociopaths. A fact we may forget after all these years of laughing at Donald Trump.

Speer Defense – I should have known but I didn’t.

Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect – A man of exceptional logistical talent and extraordinary revolting judgement in political friends.

Speer was a propagandist, not words like the slimy Goebbels, but architecture and political rallies on a grand scale. Speer designed ‘Germania’, Hitler’s vision for a European/World capital that eclipsed anything Pericles imagined, with or without a Grecian Urn full of retsina. A capital that would for 2000 years, demonstrate the superiority, power and authority of NAZI Germany:

Germania was never conceived, Speer’s model disappeared in ashes, in consequence of Allied Bombing. Much like most German cities and all of Hitler’s NAZI evil vision. Contemporary propagandists of the Neo-Nazi, and White Nationalist variety, never seem to mention how Time Travel reveals the ashen consequences of their nonsense.

Speer’s Cathedral of Light – All smoke and mirrors.

Speer’s built propaganda works, ‘The Cathedral of Light’, featured in Nazi Party rallies. It consisted of 130 anti-aircraft searchlights, at intervals of 12 meters, aimed skyward to create a series of vertical bars surrounding the audience. Speer described the effect. “The feeling was of a vast room, with the beams serving as mighty pillars of infinitely light outer walls”. The British Ambassador to Germany, Sir Neville Henderson, described it as, “Both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice”. Henderson, quintessentially British establishment, should have known better: Propaganda often appears as seductive entertainment.

Cool as Speer’s ‘Cathedral’ may have been, it was all smoke and literally mirrors, the world should have reacted to the chilling message of hate and domination! Humility seems an excellent DADA principle.

Fascist Achievements? – Talent gone, toadies remain.

In the 1920’s and 1930 Speer was a crap unsuccessful architect. A period when German architecture, design and engineering was world leading. Innovative, focused on solving real problems, and creating healthy affordable environments for the common people. Hitler condemned this, declaring it Marxist, immoral and decadent. Speer’s neo classical exaggerations arrived! German architects, designers and engineers fled to the US in droves – Contributing mightily to US economic success post war. Today’s neo-Nazis and white nationalist propaganda, never seems to mention that driving away critical talent is an inevitable reaction. Talent gone – toadies remain.

In consequence of his logistical genius, Speer became Hitler’s Armaments and Production Minster. The dubious distinction of producing more weapons in the last 12 months under massive, allied air raids, then in the preceding years. Speer also faced the 1946 Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, it seems he never knew of the Holocaust (dubious), but was responsible for the abuse, starvation and death of thousands in his industry. Speer received a 25-year sentence in solitary and served every day. Russia objected hypocritically: “The US, spared Speer from hanging in return for the secrets of his logistics”. No doubt these Russian ‘vodka sours’, were not a sense of thwarted desire for justice, but because US Security captured Speer first! Abundant hypocrisy and propaganda are long standing comrades in solidarity.

Albert Speer was charming, quick witted and urbane: Also, self-seeking and ruthless. Propagandists come in many forms. And Russian President Putin is the contemporary worst! Putin is also the current world’s greatest hypocrite. A subject I discussed in my Postcard, ‘Fools, heroes, and Villains’.

Russian for Dummies.

In some ways, Russian propaganda builds on Soviet Cold War–era techniques, with an emphasis on obfuscation and on getting targets to act in the interests of the propagandist without realizing that they have done so. In other ways, it is completely new and driven by the characteristics of the contemporary information environment. Russia has taken advantage of technology and available media in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War. It’s tools and channels now include the internet, social media, and the evolving landscape of professional and amateur journalism and media outlets. It is international, effective, far reaching, a firehose of falsehood – And Putin controls it all, what he says goes and is repeated!

Now we are back in 2023, is there any self-protection against propaganda?

Conclusion: Defence Against the Dark Arts.

I would like to suggest keep yourself informed. But that’s hard, we are all very busy and effective contemporary propaganda, as Putin uses, is much more sophisticated than silly slogan bearing baseball caps. EG: Russian Propaganda Robots (BOTS) are just as likely to slam this Post. Which explains why Siobhan O’Reilly of Kilkenny, is always bagging me online. I thought it was my endless charm and wit!

Winston Churchill’s advice, ignore the words, focus on the actions is dependable. But in the case of your precious vote, the actions come after your vote, the damage may be done.

So, then I remember the old adage: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. Remember propaganda is trying to deceive you into supporting something your rational mind would reject. Propaganda promises quick fixes, adult rational people don’t willingly believe in quick fixes, do they? Tragically if the propaganda is effective, they do. 74,222,958 US Citizens voted for the MAGA baseball cap!

To trace the origins of that old adage requires time travel back to 1580, with Thomas Lupton’s ‘Sivquila’. I would suggest getting a copy of Thomas’ work, but this is the only piece of wisdom it contains. Unless of course your house is infected with fleas, wolves, demons, witches, and sorcery. Thomas has plenty of quick fixes for these common problems. So yes, Thomas was also a propagandist, the adage that travelled down to us was firmly aimed at the Catholic Church and its promise of salvation.

I will leave you with old Winnie’s wisdom to back yourself, but even that seems not as it appears!