The problem with domestic propaganda

[August]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110010438

The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering "shark" run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a "Yankees-Go-Home" petition, at the same time launching the slogan "Europe for the Europeans." During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

[joea]

Ok read the article, have read similar things before. So...was it really a success? The Soviet bloc collapsed anyway, and am I really to believe the US doesn't try to put out propaganda of it's own now or back then? :hmm:

Why is this seen as sinister or abnormal I don't know every country tries to influence public opnion at home, and overseas if it is a big power.

[August]

Originally Posted by joea

Ok read the article, have read similar things before. So...was it really a success? The Soviet bloc collapsed anyway, and am I really to believe the US doesn't try to put out propaganda of it's own now or back then? :hmm:

Why is this seen as sinister or abnormal I don't know every country tries to influence public opnion at home, and overseas if it is a big power.

I guess it depends on how you define success. It's not uncommon for wartime things outlive their creators, like a long forgotten bomb that kills a bunch of construction workers decades after the war, a propaganda strategy can take on a life of it's own.

[SUBMAN1]

Always interesting to see things through the eyes of others. That whole article should be posted and formatted. It is worth the read.

-S

[Tchocky]

Funny, it reads like propaganda

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by August

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy.

Its almost as if he's trying to say that that stuff didn't really happen at all.:hmm: I'm pretty sure every one of those things happened at least once... or twice.

This guy sounds like another right wing polemic warning us against the dangers of being young, having an open mind, and daring to question the King. If he wasn't so dramatic he might be able to make a point without making us totalitarian leftists shake our heads.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Funny, it reads like propaganda

What makes it worse - it is not!

-S

[Tchocky]

It certainly adopts the pose and language of propagandists, such as

- If we don't stop questioning, the Evil-Doers win
- Those who question are communists
- I escaped from a repressive regime, so I say NO DISSENT!

etc

[August]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

It certainly adopts the pose and language of propagandists, such as

- If we don't stop questioning, the Evil-Doers win
- Those who question are communists
- I escaped from a repressive regime, so I say NO DISSENT!

etc

I don't see how you could get any of that from the article. Is the concept that such hateful rhetoric could be deliberately inspired and promoted by a hostile foreign government that hard to believe?

[August]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Its almost as if he's trying to say that that stuff didn't really happen at all.:hmm: I'm pretty sure every one of those things happened at least once... or twice.

This guy sounds like another right wing polemic warning us against the dangers of being young, having an open mind, and daring to question the King. If he wasn't so dramatic he might be able to make a point without making us totalitarian leftists shake our heads.

No he's a former KGB General describing not opinion, not hearsay but his first hand knowledge. So how's it feel to find out you've been manipulated like that?

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by August

No he's a former KGB General describing not opinion, not hearsay but his first hand knowledge. So how's it feel to find out you've been manipulated like that?

He is also a traitor to his own people, and probably living very well through being ingratiating to his new keepers. If it was an American traitor now living in Russia / Iran / whatever making the same claims about America, will you be as sympathetic?

I have no doubt that the Soviet Union played up any American atrocities or mistakes for all they are worth. The United States does the same. It might even be that at least some of the atrocities did not occur. But to imply the Americans were really goody-goodies in Vietnam makes him sound just like a paid rat. To try and imply that any negative commentary is damaging to the nation makes me feel he never really gotten out of the old Soviet stereotypical mold.

I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president.

The guy doesn't even separate correlation and cause. Could it be, uh, that Presidents respected by Americans were really better Presidents enforcing better policies, thus winning respect domestically and globally? How did he become a General of anything with this level of intellect?

[August]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

He is also a traitor to his own people, and probably living very well through being ingratiating to his new keepers. If it was an American traitor now living in Russia / Iran / whatever making the same claims about America, will you be as sympathetic?

A disinformation campaign directed against the subjects of a tolitarian government like the Soviet Union? The restricted access to news and information alone makes such a comparison flawed.

To try and imply that any negative commentary is damaging to the nation makes me feel he never really gotten out of the old Soviet stereotypical mold.

But he doesn't imply that, at least not in that article. There's a vast difference between "any" negative commentary and lies, exaggerations and outright character assassination don't ya think?

It might even be that at least some of the atrocities did not occur. But to imply the Americans were really goody-goodies in Vietnam makes him sound just like a paid rat.

That's mighty nice of you to contemplate that "at least some" of the millions of Americans who served in that war weren't the baby raping psycho killers the left made them out to be.

The guy doesn't even separate correlation and cause. Could it be, uh, that Presidents respected by Americans were really better Presidents enforcing better policies, thus winning respect domestically and globally?

I can think of at least two contrary examples of this off the top of my head. Nixon and Carter. Both were quite popular globally but not domestically in their day.

Now you seem to be doing a lot of reading between the lines with your continued references to what the author "implies". Why not stick to what he says instead of trying to find a hidden meaning? Is it that hard to believe that there could be a residiual effect to the decades of propaganda disseminated by the Soviets?

[Heibges]

Is Oliver Stone a KGB agent?

[August]

Originally Posted by Heibges

Is Oliver Stone a KGB agent?

You have a point?

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by August

That's mighty nice of you to contemplate that "at least some" of the millions of Americans who served in that war weren't the baby raping psycho killers the left made them out to be.

The left the left. Oh my you are just as bad as the lefties thatyou have such disdain for. You use such panned words to generalize and sum your arguments up into something that sounds very good and very adversarial. Just accept it that American kids in Vietnam were forced to fight a disgusting war and in the process some of them were turned into brutal murderers. That happens in every war but Vietnam was particularly bad for some reason. Maybe its the sudden sense of moral conscience or maybe its because there was no righteous justification for the fight itself to offset the evils that war inevitably breeds amongst honest men. However it may be don't go defending the atrocities with accusation against the phantom "left". I say something academic about the neo-cons and I'm laughed at but oh my, the "left". Generalizations are the habit of laziness and hate.

When you talk about the left and say nothing more you just sound like the porpoganda that we're suposed to be deriding anyway.