Pointing to the massive amounts of propaganda spewed by government and institutions
around the world, observers have called our era the age of Orwell. But the fact is that
Orwell was a latecomer on the scene. As early as World War I, American historians
offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task they called
"historical engineering," by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they
would serve state policy. In this instance, the U.S. government wanted to silence
opposition to the war. This represents a version of Orwell's 1984, even before Orwell
was writing.
In 1921, the famous American journalist Walter Lippmann said that the art of democracy
requires what he called the "manufacture of consent." This phrase is an Orwellian
euphemism for thought control. The idea is that in a state such as the U.S. where the
government can't control the people by force, it had better control what they
think. The
Soviet Union is at the opposite end of the spectrum from us in its domestic freedoms. It's
essentially a country run by the bludgeon. It's very easy to determine what propaganda is in
the USSR: what the state produces is propaganda.
That's the kind of thing that Orwell described in 1984 (not a very good book in my
opinion). 1984 is so popular because it's trivial and it attacks our enemies. If Orwell had
dealt with a different problem-- ourselves--his book wouldn't have been so popular. In
fact, it probably wouldn't have been published.
In totalitarian societies where there's a Ministry of Truth, propaganda doesn't really try to
control your thoughts. It just gives you the party line. It says, "Here's the official doctrine;
don't disobey and you won't get in trouble. What you think is not of great importance to
anyone. If you get out of line we'll do something to you because we have force."
Democratic societies can't work like that, because the state is much more limited in its
capacity to control behavior by force. Since the voice of the people is allowed to speak
out, those in power better control what that voice says--in other words, control what
people think. One of the ways to do this is to create political debate that appears to
embrace many opinions, but actually stays within very narrow margins. You have to make
sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions--and that those assumptions
are the basis of the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda
system, the debate is permissible.
The Vietnam War is a classic example of America's propaganda system. In the mainstream
media--the New York Times, CBS, and so on-- there was a lively debate about the war. It
was between people called "doves" and people called "hawks." The hawks said, "If we
keep at it we can win." The doves said, "Even if we keep at it, it would probably be too
costly for use, and besides, maybe we're killing too many people." Both sides agreed on
one thing. We had a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam. Doves and hawks
alike refused to admit that aggression was taking place. They both called our military
presence in Southeast Asia the defense of South Vietnam, substituting "defense" for
"aggression" in the standard Orwellian manner. In reality, we were attacking South
Vietnam just as surely as the Soviets later attacked Afghanistan.
Consider the following facts. In 1962 the U.S. Air Force began direct attacks against the
rural population of South Vietnam with heavy bombing and defoliation . It was part of a
program intended to drive millions of people into detention camps where, surrounded by
barbed wire and armed guards, they would be "protected" from the guerrillas they were
supporting--the "Viet Cong," the southern branch of the former anti-French resistance (the
Vietminh). This is what our government calls aggression or invasion when conducted by
some official enemy. The Saigon government had no legitimacy and little popular support,
and its leadership was regularly overthrown in U.S.-backed coups when it was feared they
might arrange a settlement with the Viet Cong. Some 70,000 "Viet Cong" had already been
killed in the U.S.-directed terror campaign before the outright U.S. invasion took place in
1972.
Like the Soviets in Afghanistan, we tried to establish a government in Saigon to invite us
in. We had to overthrow regime after regime in that effort. Finally we simply invaded
outright. That is plain, simple aggression. But anyone in the U.S. who thought that our
policies in Vietnam were wrong in principle was not admitted to the discussion about the
war. The debate was essentially over tactics.
Even at the peak of opposition to the U.S. war, only a minuscule portion of the intellectuals
opposed the war out of principle--on the grounds that aggression is wrong. Most
intellectuals came to oppose it well after leading business circles did--on the "pragmatic"
grounds that the costs were too high.
Strikingly omitted from the debate was the view that the U.S. could have won, but that it
would have been wrong to allow such military aggression to succeed. This was the
position of the authentic peace movement but it was seldom heard in the mainstream media.
If you pick up a book on American history and look at the Vietnam War, there is no such
event as the American attack on South Vietnam. For the past 22 years, I have searched in
vain for even a single reference in mainstream journalism or scholarship to an "American
invasion of South Vietnam" or American "aggression" in South Vietnam. In America's
doctrinal system, there is no such event. It's out of history, down Orwell's memory hole.
If the U.S. were a totalitarian state, the Ministry of Truth would simply have said, "It's right
for us to go into Vietnam. Don't argue with it." People would have recognized that as the
propaganda system, and they would have gone on thinking whatever they wanted. They
would have plainly seen that we were attacking Vietnam, just as we can see the Soviets are
attacking Afghanistan.
People are much freer in the U.S., they are allowed to express themselves. That's why it's
necessary for those in power to control everyone's thought, to try and make it appear as if
the only issues in matters such as U.S. intervention in Vietnam are tactical: Can we get
away with it? There is no discussion of right or wrong.
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. propaganda system did its job partially but not entirely.
Among educated people it worked very well. Studies show that among the more educated
parts of the population, the government's propaganda about the war is now accepted
unquestioningly. One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the
uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another
is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some
capacity as agents of the propaganda system--and they believe what the system expects
them to believe. By and large, they're part of the privileged elite, and share the interests
and perceptions of those in power.
On the other hand, the government had problems in controlling the opinions of the general
population. According to some of the latest polls, over 70 percent of Americans still
thought the war was, to quote the Gallup Poll, "fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a
mistake." Due to the widespread opposition to the Vietnam War, the propaganda system
lost its grip on the beliefs of many Americans. They grew skeptical about what they were
told. In this case there's even a name for the erosion of belief. It's called the "Vietnam
Syndrome," a grave disease in the eyes of America's elites because people understand too
much.
Let me gives on more example of the powerful propaganda system at work in the U.S.--the
congressional vote on contra aid in March 1986. For three months prior to the vote, the
administration was heating up the political atmosphere, trying to reverse the congressional
restrictions on aid to the terrorist army that's attacking Nicaragua. I was interested in how
the media was going to respond to the administration campaign for the contras. So I studied
two national newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times. In January,
February, and March, I went through every one of their editorials, opinion pieces, and the
columns written by their own columnists. There were 85 pieces. Of these, all were
anti-Sandinista. On that issue, no discussion was tolerable.
There are two striking facts about the Sandinista government, as compared with our allies
in Central America--Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. One is that the Sandinista
government doesn't slaughter its population. That's a well-recognized fact. Second,
Nicaragua is the only one of those countries in which the government has tried to direct
social services to the poor. This too, is not a matter of debate; it is conceded on all sides
to be true.
On the other hand, our allies in Guatemala and El Salvador are among the world's worst
terrorist states. So far in the 1980s, they have slaughtered over 150,000 of their own
citizens, with U.S. support. These nations do little for their populations except torture,
terrorize, and kill them. Honduras is a little different. In Honduras, there's a government of
the rich that robs the poor. It doesn't kill on the scale of El Salvador or Guatemala, but a
large part of the population is starving to death.
So in examining the 85 editorials, I also looked for these two facts about Nicaragua. The
fact that the Sandinistas are radically different from our Central American allies in that
they don't slaughter their population was not mentioned once. That they have carried out
social reforms for the poor was referred to in two phrases, both buried. Two phrases in 85
columns on one crucial issue, zero phrases in 85 columns on another.
That's really remarkable control over thought on a highly debated issue. After that I went
through the editorials on El Salvador and Nicaragua from 1980 to the present; it's
essentially the same story. Nicaragua, a country under attack by the regional superpower,
did on October 15, 1985, what we did in Hawaii during World War II: instituted a state of
siege. There was a huge uproar in the mainstream American press--editorials,
denunciations, claims that the Sandinistas are totalitarian Stalinist monsters, and so on.
Two days after that, on October 17, El Salvador renewed its state of siege. Instituted in
March 1980 and renewed monthly afterwards, El Salvador's state of siege was far more
harsh than Nicaragua's. It blocked freedom of movement and virtually all civil
rights. It
was the framework within which the U.S.-trained and -organized army has carried out
torture and slaughter.
The New York Times considered the Nicaraguan state of siege a great atrocity. The
Salvadoran state of siege, far harsher in its methods and it application, was never
mentioned in 160 New York Times editorials on Nicaragua and El Salvador, up to now
[mid-1986, the time of this interview].
We are often told the country is a budding democracy, so it can't possibly be having a state
of siege. According to news reports on El Salvador, Duarte is heading a moderate centrist
government under attack by terrorists of the left and of the right. This is complete nonsense.
Every human rights investigation, even the U.S. government in private, concedes that
terrorism is being carried out by the Salvadoran government itself. The death squads are
the security forces. Duarte is simply a front for terrorists. But that is seldom said publicly.
All this falls under Walter Lippmann's notion of "the manufacture of consent." Democracy
permits the voice of the people to be heard, and it is the task of the intellectual to ensure
that this voice endorses what leaders perceive to be the right course. Propaganda is to
democracy what violence is to totalitarianism. The techniques have been honed to a high
art in the U.S. and elsewhere, far beyond anything that Orwell dreamed of. The device of
feigned dissent (as practiced by the Vietnam- era "doves," who criticized the war on the
grounds of effectiveness and not principle) is one of the more subtle means, though simple
lying and suppressing fact and other crude techniques are also highly effective.
For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task
than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy
to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the propaganda system to which we
are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling or unwitting instruments.
[This is an expanded version of an article excerpted from Propaganda Review (Winter
1987-88). Subscriptions: $20/yr. (4 issues) from Media Alliance, Fort Mason, Bldg. D,
San Francisco, CA 94123. This article was drawn from an interview conducted by David
Barsamian of KGNU-Radio in Boulder, Colorado (cassettes available for sale; write
David Barsamian, 1415 Dellwood, Boulder, CO 80302), and an essay from Chomsky's book Radical Priorities, edited by C.P. Otero (1984). Black Rose Books, 3981 Boulevard
St. Laurent, Montral H2W 1Y5, Quebec, Canada.]