United States of Propaganda Unleashes Unholy War Against Newt Gingrich

[Sandra]

Can America Survive the Dark Sophistry of Spiritually Diseased GOP Leftists?

United States of Propaganda Unleashes Unholy War Against Newt Gingrich

Kelly OConnell  Sunday, January 29, 2012

It would be perverse to suggest the recent Matt Drudge-delivered blitzkrieg against Newt Gingrich was anything but a massive, coordinated propaganda campaign to incinerate his candidacy to cinders and ash. Of course, it would also be unfair to insinuate Newt is anything but the father of many of his own current struggles. But, be that as it may, it is hard to see how such a scorched earth policy against a lively and talented Republican with vast leadership experience helps the GOP or harms Obama.

Such propaganda campaigns are not unknown in politics, but are rare in healthy democracies. That such a firebombing maneuver is being waged within the GOP against a viable member in order to transparently benefit Mitt Romney­the most progressive candidate­cannot possibly bode well for the future state of the party or of our union as a whole.

Jacques Ellul wrote one of the great modern works on Propaganda, tapping deeply into the psyche of the masters of political mischaracterization and mass manipulation. He observed one added aspect to the traditional dark arts of the propagandist – making the goal of propaganda the moving adherents towards a mystical ideology and false religion. According to Ellul, the purpose of propaganda is to exhaust man’s freedom, and so to make him directable in all his words, thoughts and deeds. The subject of modern propaganda is the topic of this essay.

I. What is Propaganda?

Webster’s defines propaganda as:

The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person. Or; Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also, a public action having such an effect.

Jacques Ellul claims there is no single definition of propaganda, but lists one made by the former Institute for Propaganda Analysis, as being highly influential. The IPA defined propaganda as

The expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations.

II. Jacques Ellul’s Analysis of Propaganda

One of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, Jacques Ellul’s most widely known work is Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes.This book goes well-beyond the typical fare on the subject, creating a masterful portrait of the often terrifying modern use of propaganda. Ellul’s fascinating study includes the following points:

A. Education is for Propaganda: Use of propaganda necessitates the proper kind of public education system. Since a good education for children foils such indoctrination, it’s absolutely imperative that early training prepare a child for lifelong manipulation. Or, as Ellul’s English translator, Konrad Kellen says about his issue,

A related point, central in Ellul’s thesis, is that modern propaganda cannot work without “education;” he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary he says, education, or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls ‘pre-propaganda­the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes and posing as “facts” and as “education.”

It cannot be doubted that modern “free” public education stresses “facts” versus how to think, write and debate­or the core curriculum of the famed liberal education. This failure is the source of much subsequent evil.

B. Intellectuals are Empty Vessels Designed for Propaganda: Consequently, intellectuals are not merely the most likely group to be successfully directed by propaganda, but their very ideological existence depends upon drinking from this well. Again, Kellen sums up this point:

Ellul follows through by designating intellectuals as virtually the most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons: (1) they absorb the largest amounts of second hand, unverifiable information; (2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; (3) they feel themselves capable of “judging for themselves.” They literally need propaganda.

C. Propaganda is Geared for Action, Not Mere Belief­But Defeated by Debate: Propaganda is meant to direct persons to act, not merely believe. Contra, it is imperative they do not think deeply about their action. Ellul says on this,

Remember that propaganda seeks to induce action, adherence and participation - with as little thought as possible. According to propaganda, it is useless, even harmful for man to think; thinking prevents him from acting with the required righteousness and simplicity. Action must come directly from the depths of the unconscious; it must release tension, become a reflex. This presumes that thought unfolds on an entirely unread level, that it never engages in political decisions. And this is in fact so. No political thought that is at all coherent or distinct can possibly be applied.

But as Ellul writes,

Propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins…Propaganda cannot be satisfied with partial successes, for it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion.

In other words, propaganda seeks to overwhelm the recipient so that resistance seems foolish or even crazy.

D. Propaganda is Anti-Historical & Consumes all Literature: The appetite for a historically cleansed record in accord with present propagandized narratives is also noted by Ellul, as he writes:

Finally, propaganda will take over literature (present and past) and history, which must be rewritten according to propaganda’s needs.

We have seen this recently with Gingrich’s “history: being mauled beyond recognition, and with other histories, such as the Puritans who had to be demonized because their convictions are now verboten. Further, the Arts themselves become vessels for delivery of propaganda, such as Eisenstein’s masterpiece­Battleship Potemkin.

E. Modern Propaganda is Deeply Religious: The difference between modern and older propaganda is the newer variety seeks not just to persuade, but more importantly to cause to become a follower of mystical, religious claims regarding some special group or ideology.

Ellul comments on this,

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief…the propagandist tries to create myths by which man will live, which respond to his sense of the sacred. Such an image pushes man to action precisely because it includes all that he feels is good, just and true, such as the myth of race, of the proletariat, of the F ºhrer, of Communist society. Eventually the myth takes possession of a man’s mind so completely that his life is consecrated to it.

F. Modern Man is the Center of Reality: Propaganda regimes creates a godless, humanistic cult. It claims the proper aim in life is happiness; that man is naturally good; that history develops in endless progress; that everything is matter. Ellul writes of the plight of irreligious modern man, who in his loneliness becomes an easy target for propaganda campaigns:

Above all he is a victim of emptiness-he is a man devoid of meaning. He is very busy, but he is emotionally empty, open to all entreaties and in search of only one thing-something to fill his inner void. To fill this void he goes to the movies-only a very temporary remedy. He seeks some deeper and more fulfilling attraction. He is available, and ready to listen to propaganda. He is the lonely man…

He feels the most violent need to be re-integrated into a community, to have a setting, to experience ideological and affective communication. That loneliness inside the crowd is perhaps the most terrible ordeal of modern man; that loneliness in which he can share nothing, talk to nobody, and expect nothing from anybody, leads to severe personality disturbances. For it, propaganda, encompassing Human Relations, is an incomparable remedy. It corresponds to the need to share, to be a member of a community to lose oneself in a group, to embrace a collective ideology that will end loneliness. Propaganda is the true remedy for loneliness.

III. Gingrich, Drudge & Leftist Opinion Formation

It was extraordinary to recently witness the Drudge Report website used to transparently propagandize against presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. In fact, on January 26th, 2012­ten anti-Gingrich stories sprouted on the front of the drudgereport by 7:40 am. Consider some of the Drudge titles: “Insider: Gingrich repeatedly Insulted Reagan”; “William Jefferson Gingrich”, etc.

So what did Gingrich do to attract such vitriol and naked spleen? Who knows, exactly? Certainly, Newt’s past battles with GOP brethren comes into play, as do various of his personal peccadillo’s and past sins. The important thing, though, is that a stunningly negative zeitgeist arose against Gingrich, drawing a who’s who list of GOP royalty out to launch a season of condemnation against him. All in all, it was an extraordinary and ferocious show of power and volte-face unity. And it’s not over.

One can only ponder where such brave intransigence might have landed the GOP if such a move were assembled against Barack in support of John McCain,. Again, the perfect is used as a hammer against the good­and all suffer as a result.

But blue-blooded Republicans have forgotten one thing­it’s not a Conservative value to shamelessly slander and bear false witness against a brother, regardless of how wayward his past might be. Neither is it a trick of the right to rig elections. Instead, this is the unacceptable face of leftism, always lurking beneath the surface of the GOP leadership.

Conclusion

The extent to which modern people are manipulated into thinking or believing ideas or “facts” that have no substance is remarkable. Recall, for example, the job resumes offered by Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, compared between the two, before the 2008 election. And yet one was lionized, and the other despised, simply through use of naked propaganda. Ellul writes on this, “Propaganda displaces and liberates feelings of aggression by offering specific objects of hatred to the citizen.”

In the end, if Mitt Romney is our next elected president, and uncannily refuses to dismantle Obamacare, will we only have liberal GOP leaders to blame for our nation’s inevitable destruction? Or should we only blame ourselves?

Contra, seasoned political polecat Newt Gingrich may not be out of his nine lives just yet. Stay tuned, sports-fans!

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