http://cal.jmu.edu/aleysb/chomsky.htm>


[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.]

Propaganda, American-Style

by Noam Chomsky

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.