It is easy to look back on the past and its seemingly obvious and clumsy war propaganda and wonder how so many people could be so easily deceived by such facile stuff. Germany being portrayed as a giant baboon with a club here to destroy our nation with its militaristic “kultur” and to rape all our women in its animalistic fury seems to be such an apparent and crude manipulation of people’s fears that we are often shocked that anyone was seriously affected by it at all. The real dangerous of this hubris though isn’t that we are shocked at about the perceived infantile beliefs of the recent past. The danger is that we develop this infantile belief that all propaganda is so obvious and therefore come to believe that we are so intelligent that we would recognize when we are being manipulated by propaganda and therefore be able to reject it if ever subjected to it.
The reality is that those old World War I (WWI) posters are not really propaganda, they’re the results of the propaganda, the constant reminders of the propaganda that the public had already been subjected to, which had already sunk down deep into the hearts and minds of the American people so far that it was often imperceptibly a part of just how they saw the world, and which only needed to be triggered by some obvious cue, such as by a war time poster. The real propaganda are the half-truths, myths, legends, and outright lies we are told in order to believe in the ideas that will justify the power of the State and the actions of the government. What we then typically think of as propaganda are the ways that politicians essentially “pull” these triggers in order to set us off on the path that they want us to follow so that we will support them in or, at the very least, allow them to do whatever it is they want to do but which we might object to absent the manipulation.
While this topic is a large one, one which I have been, in a sense, been fighting against and sought to reveal since first helping to launch this website, I want to zero in here on a very specific example of propaganda – war propaganda. And I don’t mean an evaluation of war posters, such as shown above from WWI. I mean the actual manipulation, the way that ideas, values, and beliefs are exploited to manipulate the public into supporting the greatest lie of all – that the slaughter of humans in war is moral and necessary for the creation and maintenance of civilization. In this exploration I will be guided by the work of Dr. Anne Morelli, a Belgian historian who in her book Elementary Principles of War Propaganda developed a set of basic characteristics common to State efforts to promote and justify every war. Modelled after the Decalogue and sometimes styled as “commandments” themselves, these ten principles are an excellent guideline which you can judge the lies of politicians by to see when they are lying to and manipulating you into doing, supporting, or allowing something you would otherwise recognize as evil – the mass waste of resources and the horrendous destruction of human life that is war.
The Basic Principles
First, I want to simply list the ten principles and then we will delve into each one with a little bit more commentary on how they can be seen in society today. In terms of the application of these principles I will limit myself to the United States mostly as it is the example I am most familiar with. But anyone from outside the US who may read this I highly encourage you to apply the principles to your own society. In doing so I am certain that you will find examples in your society. This I believe is true even if yours is not actively engaged in a war as these principles will apply to other arenas of life (such as politics where the partisan division and elections are often framed in militaristic and combatitive terms.)
The Principles:
- We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves
- The other guy is the sole responsible for this war
- Our adversary’s leader is evil and looks evil
- We are defending a noble purpose, not special interest
- The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes
- We suffer very few losses, the enemy’s losses are enormous
- Our cause is sacred
- Intellectuals and artists support our cause
- The enemy uses unauthorized weapons.
- Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors
The Principles With Commentary
Principle 1: We only fight in self-defense
Dr. Morelli points out that before every war those in power always make it a point to repeatedly say that they are opposed to war and are only acting in self-defense. The way politicians repeat this you would imagine they are all such pacifistic people that war simply would never occur since no one would ever commit and act of aggression and without that there is nothing you need to defend yourself from. This is because war is massively unpopular. Generally speaking no one wants to see their child sent home in pine box or several Ziploc bags. So you have to convince them, but no one wants to be the person responsible for those deaths because if you’re responsible then you lose the support of the public. Therefore you need a monster to slay, one so evil that you can rally everyone against it, which is where the next principles comes in to play.
Principle 2: Our enemy is solely to blame for everything
Though inwardly most politicians are ravening wolves, outwardly they want to project the image of being as innocent and pure as a lamb. If they are too honest about their intentions and openly say they just want to wage unending wars in order to benefit from the cost and chaos of war then they violate the metanarrative of society, the myth we are conditioned to believe that says we aren’t the bad guy. This is very bad for their re-election chances. Even dictators need the mass support of the population and must be careful not to challenge the story, which is why they always position themselves as saviors and their wars as necessary for the commonweal. So all blame must rest with the monster, the Enemy that needs to be destroyed for the good of the nation if not the world.
In regards to Principles 1 and 2 think of the lead up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war which, with starts and stops, has more or less been ongoing for nearly two decades now. The American President didn’t stand up there and accuse Saddam Hussein of being Santa Claus. George Bush and his Administration said that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), that they were trying to develop nuclear weapons, that they were developing biological and chemical weapons, and that Saddam Hussein was tied to al-Qaeda, specifically helping to carry out the September 11th, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks. All of these claims were utter and complete lies knowingly told to the public. Why? Because they needed to do so in order to justify war with Iraq and in order to do that they had to prove Hussein was a monster who was actively threatening the lives of the American people and who had already done so by helping to carry out the 9/11 attacks. Therefore Americans had to go slay the monster. Recently, as of this article, Joe Biden ordered the bombing of Syria and justified it by saying he was striking back against “alleged Iranian-linked fighters” in “response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq.”
Principle 3: The opposite leader is pure evil
People naturally favor cooperation and diplomacy over warfare. Again, no one wants their child brought home in a Ziploc baggie if the whole conflict could simply have been negotiated away. Therefore the enemy must be irrational, implacable, and irredeemable. They must be evil, and specifically the leader must be evil. The leader is the symbol of the nation, he reduces the complexity, diversity, and depth of humanity that can be found in all nations into a singular form which can be easily understood and presented however necessary in order to justify the war. If the enemy leader is evil then all the enemy people must be evil, because only an evil people would allow such an evil being to lead or rule them. And evil, by its very nature, cannot be negotiated with or be made to see reason. It can only be destroyed. This also has the additional effect of discrediting the critics of the war as either being cowards or corrupt themselves. Dr. Morelli notes that in the modern age the most common “face of evil” that people invoke and the most common “name of evil” conjure by is Adolf Hitler.
Going back to the Second Iraq War, you can find repeated examples of Saddam Hussein being compared to Adolf Hitler, by both the Americans and the British. That comparison wasn’t new, it had been made in 1991 as well, for much the same reason – to justify war against Hussein. In the same vein the Saudis and the Israelis have said that the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, is a present day Hitler who is as big a threat in the Middle East and Hitler was in Europe. While running for office now US President Joe Biden suggested that having a positive diplomatic relationship with North Korea was like having a positive diplomatic relationship with Hitler before he invaded Europe. And it is common for the media to try and draw comparisons between Nazism and Islam. The Guardian even made the suggestion that Nazis, jihadists, school shooters, and “right wingers” – i.e. those considered on the political Right in any fashion – are all akin to one another. Western propagandists trying to drum up domestic support for fighting a war with Russia have done so by repeatedly comparing Russian leader Vladimir Putin to Hitler. Hitler is the definition of evil and thus when it comes time to justify the next crusade he is invoked as being the one the most recently declared enemy is like.
Principle 4: We are acting out of altruism not greed
If you look at all the statements from governments fighting in WWI you’ll not find a single one admit to fighting the war in order to prove the nation’s superiority, to crush the economic and military power of a potential equal, to increase the nation’s hegemonic control over the rest of the world, the desire to annex the enemy’s colonies in Africa and Asia, or the desire to expand the power of the State. While these goals would often be talked about and planned out privately in the halls of power in the different national capitals the only message conveyed to the public was that the war was in national defense, the defense of weaker nations, and to secure the place of democracy – and therefore liberty – in the world. These messages have proven so popular that they have continued to be the justifications for every war waged in the 20th century.
The reasoning seems obvious. The good guys can never be concerned with such issues as costs and deaths. We’re not greedy. We’re here to save people and save the world, not impose our will on others but to help them achieve their own liberty. These are the kind of ideals that motivate people to fight and die. If you told them the truth – that they were murdering and dying to increase or secure the power and wealth of the political and politically connected elites – no one would sign up. But everyone has been taught from childhood that killing and dying for some “noble cause” is heroic and wonderful, making those who do so heroes. It is all hogwash, but it sounds good, makes you feel good – noble, heroic, proud, patriotic, etc.- and the truth is something no one wants to hear. This is why Bush and Obama prattled on endlessly about turning the nations of the Middle East into democracies and why when Trump told the truth about it all he was instantly vilified for it. The myth may be ashes in our collective stomach but it tastes like honey.
Principle 5: Only the Enemy commits atrocities
Anything the enemy ever does is always presented in the worst light possible. They don’t accidentally hit civilian targets. They slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. We on the other hand never do this and never will. Yes, sometimes horrible accidents happen but we never do it on purpose or even out of sloppiness. It was and always will be an unfortunate mishap and we will always work to ensure it never happens. This messaging works two ways. First, it magnifies and solidifies the supposed evil of the enemy. Secondly, it works to absolve us of any wrongs or corruption so that we can continue pretending to think of ourselves as the “good guy,” therefore continuing the war path we are on no matter how many are slaughtered. A great paper by Dr. Johannes Scherling details how American atrocities in Mosul were ignored by the mass media while atrocities by the Syrian government (if indeed the Syrian government did what it is accused of) have been heavily focused on in an effort to justify American actions in the Middle East and ignore the evil results of those actions is well worth reading. It demonstrates this principle in action perfectly.
The Battle of Mosul raged from October 2016 to July 2017 and was waged to drive ISIS from one of its strongholds in northern Iraq. ISIS, or the Islamic State in Syria, is just a bunch of modern-day Nazis, or so we have been told. Again, the face of evil being conjured up to justify waging war and slaughtering civilians. And I do mean slaughtering. While some mass media outlets picked up on reports that suggested civilians may have been killed, the deaths were always undersold. NPR, for example, claimed that as many as 4,865 civilians were killed by both American and ISIS forces. The reality is that numbers are easily ten times that amount with real estimates ranging between 40,000 to 60,000 or more, civilians slaughtered, almost all by American dropped bombs. In comparison there were at most 12,000 ISIS fighters in Mosul, meaning American forces murdered 5 civilians for every one potential ISIS fighter. But that isn’t a war crime. It isn’t a crime against humanity. It isn’t genocide, ethnic cleansing, or mass murder on unfathomable scale, and it certainly isn’t an atrocity.
This is the “liberation of Mosul” because Americans soldiers don’t commit crimes against humanity, they liberate people, they bring freedom and democracy. Tell that to the 60,000 slaughtered, the tens of thousands more maimed for the rest of their lives and/or had everything they worked for and everyone they loved annihilated by American bombs and bullets. This all leaves me with this question, “If the Syrian government’s killing 50 of its own people with poison gas justifies America’s military action then what kind of military action is justified against America for its slaughter of 60,000 people in Mosul? If that makes the Syrian leader evil, then what does this make our government?” But don’t you worry yourself with such questions. Only the bad guy terrorists commit atrocities.
Principle 6: The Enemy’s losses are enormous
Every nation at war attempts to minimize their losses and maximize the enemy’s. Politicians know that even with all the propaganda that people have fed the support for the war is precarious. When people see their own start dying they have two reactions. At first the engage in a sunken cost fallacy, “We can’t let them have died in vain.” As time goes on though, at a point that is largely impossible to completely predict, the mood of the public changes. If losses get too large, if costs seem too great, then it flips a switch in the hearts and minds of the people and they turn against the war, against the fighting, and start demanding that it come to an end. So politicians do everything they can, manipulate numbers every which way possible, and outright lie about the number of casualties in order to obfuscate just how destructive the war has been for their own people. This is perhaps more important than even hiding war atrocities. It seems like most people can be callous when those dying aren’t “their people,” with time and distance, both actual and cultural, allowing for us to think of the slaughtered “enemy” civilians as either deserving for being so evil, supporting such evil, or simply as if it were distant and unreal. But when it is our “our people” the war comes home in much more gruesome ways, ways which we don’t want to see happen to those we don’t just distantly sympathize with but for whom we empathize as being “our own.”
Principle 7: The Sacred Cause
When those human casualties began to mount, especially our own, those in power have to justify what they’re doing. Eventually you reach a point where even if people think the war is “for a good cause,” it won’t matter. A “good cause” won’t matter to someone who becomes convinced that the life of his or her child was wasted. The cause must be motivated by something more than merely good intentions. It isn’t enough for the conflict to be good, it must also be righteous. It must become sacred, for a holy cause which transforms the dead into martyrs and heroes whose sacrifice will be for something greater than power, land, resources, or wealth, or even the “good cause.” In short, God must be on our side and when God is on your side you won’t give up. Or, at the very least, you’re willing to go much farther than you otherwise would have in prosecuting a war no matter how much it fails to achieve any of its promised results or how impossible those results actually are to achieve.
The question of course is, “Whose God?” As I have recently covered here, Christianity anciently and modernly is a religion that absolutely forbids killing and renounces all war for all reasons so when people talk about God blessing the nation’s leaders and troops it certainly isn’t the Christian God they’re talking about. So who are we worshipping when we declare that God will bless us as we destroy hospitals, blow up schools, bomb weddings, murder millions of people, and annihilate civilizations older than human history? There idol is the State itself. As the eminent psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung explained, the government undermines and supplants the religious beliefs and impulses of the masses, directing through various means their faith and worship from whatever God or Gods they worship to the State itself. The symbols of the nation are treated as holy and its historic leaders are treated as deities while present day leaders are treated as messiahs. Its institutions are themselves treated as holy, which is why political buildings are spoken of as being temples, why democracy is called sacred, and why voting is compared to the very Body of Christ itself. All of these things are bred into us from childhood, especially if you attended public school which indoctrinate the masses for war, to the point that we most likely don’t even think of them, that we don’t realize what is happening when these ideas are triggered by the political propagandists. Hence “spreading democracy” is more than just a political goal, it becomes a sacred crusade that is ever just and ever right by the mere dint of its goal, which is why both Leftists and Rightists unitedly declare their dedication to it. Democracy is sacred, spreading it is a righteous crusade, and when you do so you are fulfilling God’s will. Just don’t think too hard about which God you are serving.
Principle 8: Intellectuals and artists support the war cause.
The amount of intellectuals and artists who are truly against war and the wars the nation is involved in are minor compared to those who support it. The support of artists allows those in power to use the emotional power of music and art to present the nation and its causes as “right” and deserving of the support of the public. By playing on the emotional power of ideas this class repackages political propaganda in a way that manipulates the feelings of the public, winning their sympathy and acceptance for the war by presenting it and those who wage it in a positive light. The intellectuals whose words are accepted as authoritative always line up in support of their nation’s war efforts. It doesn’t matter how dedicated they are to “universal principles” they were before the war, after it has begun they always support it. The closest they get to criticizing the war is criticizing the politicians in power by arguing that others should be the ones to really lead the nation in this “time of crisis.” And those that don’t? They get marginalized as foolish, unwise, or even traitors.
It makes sense that politicians would want the support of artists, especially in the modern age when their opinions can reach tens of millions of people. But this is really about more than political support. It is that they always support the war and the warmongering class. For example, in 2002 actor Samuel L. Jackson opposed the Iraq War but in 2020 he openly supported Joe Biden, who not only voted for the war but has openly defended it ever since. The same can be said of many others, such as Sean Penn, Matt Damon, Dustin Hoffman, and many other. Even Jane Fonda, who is (in)famous for protesting the Vietnam War (which she has since has apparently been ashamed of – notice her concern is the message she was sending to the troops and their families) lined up to support Biden. Can you really say you are against any war when you sign up to support the guy who played a huge part in bringing it to past and who has absurdly vowed to continue it and other wars? They’re not principled people. They’re not against the war. They’re partisan hacks who don’t care if Joe Biden slaughters another million Iraqis as long as he isn’t Donald Trump. The intellectuals have followed suit in their support for someone that they know will carry out evil warmongering policies. To be honest though, their support is likely less important because most people don’t vote for who a professor tells them to vote for and are much more likely to vote for who artists tell them to vote for because it seems popular.
Principle 9: The Enemy uses unauthorized weapons.
Very often in war the conflict is justified by saying that the enemy nation is using illegal and immoral weapons which justify going in and destroying him by any means necessary. This justification is absolutely absurd, of course, as war doesn’t discriminate when it comes to death dealing. Our weapons of mass destruction used to level homes, cities, and nations, murdering thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of people are no more moral or heroic than the enemies used for the same cause. The dead do not care if it was poison gas, a bomb, or an atomic explosion that killed them – it is all the same. But the propaganda usages of “proving” that the enemy is a barbarian and a savage who cannot be rationally dealt with the evidence being the types of weapons he or she uses are endlessly useful, mostly because the public has already been mentally conditioned for years to think their nation’s weapons are just while the enemies are not.
The example that may first occur to most American minds are the Syrian gas attacks or the supposed chemical, biological, and nuclear WMDs that Iraq had in 2003. Both of these were used to justify American military involvement – the first to allow the United States government to openly intervene in the Syrian Civil War in ways it had only been doing secretly up until that point and the second were lies used to justify invading and occupying Iraq. But this tactic is far older than either of these two example and can be seen in a multitude of wars and not only in democracies. Hitler, for example, used it to justify the German invasion of Poland (see second paragraph.) This is not to say, “Hitler did it so it is bad and evil!” Rather, I am attempting to point out that wars must be justified, even in totalitarian regimes explicitly built on militarism and one of the most common and successful ways of doing it is to accuse the enemy forces of having some form of illegal weapon that is a threat to other nations or people which therefore justifies war against the enemy. This is a universal tactic used by governments of all stripes to manipulate the people over which it rules.
Principle 10: Doubters are traitors.
In her final principle, Dr. Morelli explains:
Those who do not participate in official propaganda [must] be ostracized from society and suspected of intelligence with the enemy. During World War I, pacifists everywhere learned the hard way that neutrality was not possible in wartime. He who is not with us is against us. Any attempt to cast doubt on the accounts of the propaganda services is immediately condemned as a lack of patriotism or, better, a betrayal.
Any time someone questions the rhetoric against Russia, rightfully points out the causes of 9/11 and questions the anti-Iran propaganda, or reveals that the US government is engaging in illegal and immoral violation of basic human rights they’re accused of being anti-American and traitors. Those who question the powers of the government and its wars are seen as threats that must be destroyed. This is one I have had a great amount of experience with personally. I cannot count how many times I’ve been called a traitor for opposing the wars and pointing out that American soldiers are not heroes, but paid killers who volunteered to serve some of the biggest warmongers in history in carrying out an endless processions of atrocities, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. To be quite honest it is a weak accusation against me. I am loyal to Christ alone and my membership is in the Kingdom of God. My only earthly loyalties are to the Gospel and my family. But for many, who do care about national loyalty, these accusations can be powerful. Accusations of being a traitor are designed to manipulate the emotions of people, the inbred loyalties to the State that they have been indoctrinated into since childhood and which they now accept as being a priori truths. At their most base level they’re meant to shame the person their levelled at back into supporting the war in question or isolate them by marking them as heretics to the national truths. Often they are targeted by the power of the state for imprisonment or worse. Dr. Paul said it best:
Conclusion
It should not be understood that there are people in power going over a checklist used to determine how to best manipulate people. That kind of conspiracy is not going on here. Rather these principles are drawn from an evaluation of the half-truths, lies, and manipulations that politicians use to steer the public into doing what those in power what the masses to do. And the way they act can be distilled down into these ten principles that seem to be universally applicable. Understanding how they think and act can help us to be aware of how we are being deceived and manipulated into feeling, thinking, and doing things that will cause us to betray our deepest held beliefs and values to the benefit of those in power. We need the tools to help us escape such manipulation and deception so that we can assert not only power in our own lives but act in ways that will actually make the world a better place. These principles are such a tool, one that we must come back to regularly not only to remind ourselves of the principles but to use them as analytical tools to realize when we are being manipulated and lied to so that we can avoid doing what the liars and manipulators want us to do, to keep from betraying ourselves, the world, and the future for the benefit of the death dealers and authoritarians in power.