Propaganda: Lies and Headlines

Hitler Lies

In my ongoing series of propaganda, I have turned up a couple of instances of Nazis lying. First would be the invasion of Poland where Hitler is quoted as saying to his Generals (privately, I presume)

"I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth."


I got that quote off Wikipedia "Nazi Propaganda" page. A key component of Nazi pro-war propaganda was to fake a small Polish attack on Germany, then respond with a full scale invasion. This propaganda was aimed mainly at Germans, who (as all people do) wanted to feel they were defending their homeland, and not being the aggressors. Interesting note, that even today militaries like to refer to themselves as defence forces, or ministry of defence, or Donald Rumsfeld "Secretary of Defence". Apparently nobody will admit to being the offensive side.

One other Nazi lie from the same web page, a Nazi propaganda paper claimed Jews kidnapped Christian babies to eat them in ritual sacrifices. Does that even count as a lie? It's so outrageous that surely it must fall in some other category altogether, and I'm pretty sure this propaganda was aimed at ignorant people inside Germany.

Anyhow, those two together assuming both are accurate, would tend to prove the Nazis were not role model truth tellers in their propaganda. Did the propaganda backfire in the end? Not soon enough apparently.


More Propaganda Techniques - The Phony Agitators

So getting back to the types of propaganda that even well informed people can fall prey to. Last week in the University of Waterloo student newspaper "The Imprint" was an opinion piece titled "Israel not Hawkish Enough with Gaza Policy". The opinion piece advocated all kinds of inhumane treatment of Palestinians and made (what I would call) many ignorant and enraging assertions. Thankfully, it was not authored by somebody with a Jewish sounding name. Predictably there were a lot of rebuttals printed in the next edition of the paper, from students seemingly shocked that their paper would print such a piece of warmongering crap.

So far so good, I'm glad that the paper got some response to the article, I would be horrified if all they got was further extreme pro-war anti-Palestinian comments. The final effect however was this. Just by looking at those two editions of the paper you would get the impression that pro-Israelis are ignorant warmongers, and the vast majority of students are well educated and sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. Is that correct? Or was that a brilliant piece of propaganda managed by someone who was anti-Israeli?

Much as I would like to look into the background of all this an come up with a story, I don't really have the time to track down the author of the original piece and interview him as to his real motives. But it does fall into a pattern of propaganda that was used by the Nazis.

There was a Jewish book printed in New York during WW II title "Germany Must Perish" by Theodore Kaufman that called for the sterilization of all Germans after the war. It was proposed as a way to end all wars, as the Germans by that time were being seen as a major obstacle to peace. However the book itself became more famous in Germany than anywhere else, as it was an excellent piece of anti-Jewish propaganda, and helped fire up the German people to even greater fury.

http://www.ihr.org/books/kaufman/perish.html


The same pattern is used today on the Sean Hannity program in the USA, where Sean Hannity allows "liberals" to phone in and criticise him. Somehow the phone-ins during this segment are uniformly profane and ignorant. Which gives the impression -you guessed it- that all liberals are profane and ignorant. Yet somehow Sean Hannity basks in the glow of being fair minded by allowing detractors to call in and lambaste him.

Propaganda Techniques - Newspaper Headlines and Titles

A newspaper I am going to pick for this example is Canada's "National Post", an admittedly conservative paper. However they do try to present themselves as balanced and allow opposing points of view (I guess).

But this is the technique I am referring to: Setting up headlines to present one side of the story and the body to be more balanced. It's a subtle technique, which works this way. You present your side of the story in the headline, then follow up with a fairly accurate article which may not even really support the headline you printed. In fact the author of the article may be under the impression that they are writing something with journalistic balance and integrity, but the title is written later by somebody else, and puts a spin on the article that the author may not have intended. They obviously don't do this all the time, but there are plenty of examples.

May 19, 2006 the front page headline was "IRAN EYES BADGES FOR JEWS". I don't know exactly what the body of the article was, but the entire piece was later retracted in an apology of sorts. But propagandists count on the headline to leave the impression. No matter what is written underneath. No matter what retraction is issued later. You can remember the title, it sticks in your head like glue, the rest fades away with time. In many cases people don't even read the article, but they still read the title. Does that surprise you?

I remember another title of an article "THEY'RE ALL COMING HOME" This was an article announcing not that Canadian troops were coming home from Afghanistan, but that the new Conservative government had reassigned them from peacekeeping to a combat role. My eye of course was drawn to the headline, the article seemed to say the opposite. Unless you assume that "coming home" means in a coffin - or that we're not going to leave any of our dead to rot where they fall.

The latest one brought to my attention was titled "SHUT UP AND PAY FOR YOUR WINDMILL", an article January 3, 2009 about how the Ontario government was subsidising wind power. The title stood out to me as the hidden propaganda. Apparently, those environmentalists are telling the rest of us to shut up! The rest of the article is what I would call an obvious one-sided argument. The hidden propaganda that lodges in your head comes from the title, and creates an image more powerful than article itself. http://www.nationalpost.com/related/links/story.html?id=1137351