Thesis Irma - Essay: Who to follow?

In these times, often referred to as "post-truth", it is hard to judge what the truth exactly is, since the "alternative facts" are also on the menu. One could say that manipulation is an acceptable aspect of all human communication, but could one also use these skills in a good way? Is there such a thing as "a noble lie" used in a tactical manner to create awareness of a subject? The word "propaganda" quite recently came back in the debates of western society, although this practice has always been with us disguised in the term "Public Relations". We have to thank Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, for this term. Bernays thought the use of the term "propaganda" was too much associated with war time, so he coined the term "public relations" (The Century of the Self, 2002). He was inspired by the work of his uncle, whose psychoanalytic theories were an effective tool to influence public thinking. Bernays didn't think very highly of the public; as his daughter mentions in the documentary series The Century of the Self (2002) by Adam Curtis, he referred to the masses as 'Stupid'. In his book Propaganda he states:

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized (Bernays, 2005, p.37)

He often uses the term "we" in this book, although I think we can see this as propaganda for his propaganda -- he is trying to sell his theory to the reader. In reality, he saw himself as part of the elite who were bringing order to the chaos by manipulating public opinion. A famous example is his project entitled 'Torches of Freedom'. In 1928 George Washington Hill, the president of the American Tobacco Company, hired Bernays to increase their market by eliminating the social taboo against women smoking in public. As his uncle was in Vienna, Bernays gained advice from psychoanalyst A. A. Brill, who stated that it was normal for women to smoke because of oral fixation and according to Bernays biography said:

Today the emancipation of women has suppressed many of their feminine desires. More women now do the same work as men do. Many women bear no children; those who do bear have fewer children. Feminine traits are masked. Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom. (quoted in Tye, 2006, p.28) Bernays decided to create an event where he paid a selected group of women to smoke their "torches of freedom" as they walked in the Easter Sunday Parade in New York. The public was shocked by the spectacle and it gained much publicity, as women were only permitted to smoke in certain places, such as in the privacy of their own homes. This event made it acceptable for women to smoke in public, and this had a big influence on public behaviour to personal freedom and sexual equality. He made quite an impression with his work, and in 1924, Bernays was invited to help President Coolidge who was desperate for a new promotion strategy. The public was not so keen on this former Vice President who took over when President G. Harding died. Bernays organized a breakfast with famous theatre celebrities. The newspapers reported,

Actors eat cake with Coolidge... President Nearly Laughs(quoted in Tye, 2006, p.79).

Three weeks later Coolidge won the election and Bernays proved his theory of public relations, which has now became an accepted part of political communication. I would say he was the first "spin doctor" in The White House. The technique of distraction is another way to keep the public busy as philosopher, Noam Chomsky, explains in his book Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. Chomsky states in Principle 9. Manufacture Consent that consumption is shaped as a trap to keep people in their place. In this chapter he explains how advertising agencies have the goal of creating consumers, to control them by beliefs and attitudes. This distraction keeps the public's attention away from important decisions. As Walter Lippmann, writer and political theorist, wrote

The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd (quoted in Chomsky, Kappel and Wagner, 2017, p 146-147).

So distraction is one of the most important elements of propaganda, and nowadays people are continually distracted by the hype of fake news, consumerism and social media that bombard them with useless information. As Chomsky often says in interviews:

When the press focuses on the sex-life of politicians, reach for your pocket and see who is pulling out your wallet. (The Big Idea, 1996).

Intelligent people can learn to resist these temptations, but what if the distraction comes in the form of a disaster? Journalist and activist Naomi Klein gives many interesting examples in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2008). She explains how America’s “free market” policies created a system that exploits disaster shocked people and countries. She describes a system where they use the public’s disorientation from a massive collective shock, such as wars, terrorist attacks or natural disasters, to push through controversial policies. Citizens are too emotionally consumed by these disasters to resist or notice what the consequences could be. For example, after a tsunami, in Southeast Asia, the homes of the poor are swept away and the beaches are then built upon for tourist resorts. Or when the residents of New Orleans were still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, they discovered that their public housing, hospitals and schools would never be reopened (Klein, 2008). However, although one could say Edward Bernays didn't mind manipulating the public, he was firmly against lying -- not from a moral point of view, but because it goes against the interests of the propagandist. He felt that, if truth has no value, propaganda becomes ineffective. Today there is a different opinion in the field of spin doctors. The documentary Get me Roger Stone (2017) provides insight into the professional life of American political consultant, lobbyist and strategist Roger Stone. He has been involved in Republican politics for half a century and played an influential role in the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Roger Stone is proud to be labelled as a dirty trickster (Toobin, 2008) and is a regular guest on Alex Jones's conspiracy based online talk show, Infowars. He claims that 'politics is showbiz for ugly people' (Rocha, 2017) and he often uses lies to publically indict his opponents. One of the many examples of this tactic in action occurred when Stone speculated that former U.S. President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, rather than Hawaii. In the documentary, he shares his "Stone’s rules", such as 'The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring.' Stone worked together on Trump's campaign with Steve Bannon, who is currently under investigation for his involvement with Cambridge Analytica, he is also known for his involvement in the Alt right movement and worked in Hollywood for fifteen years as an entertainment producer. He produces documentaries often concerning political topics. On the film database website IMDb.com (Bannon, 2018), we find several titles such as: Clinton Cash (2016): a documentary which claims the Clintons have amassed millions in personal wealth through foreign contributions donated to the Clinton Foundation; The Undefeated (2011): is a portrait of Sarah Palin, who was also co writer of the script: and Battle for America (2010), which could be considered a 90-minute political advertisement video on behalf of the Republican Party. Although the visual language makes a filmmaker's toes curl, the manipulation techniques he employs have a huge impact on the viewer. One might perceive that there are many similarities between the manipulation strategies of Bernays, Stone and Bannon, nevertheless, there is one big difference. Philosopher Harry Frankfur¬¬t explains in his essay On Bullshit (1986) the difference between deliberate misrepresentation and "talking bullshit". Because our society seems to have developed an increasing acceptance of bullshit, this essay has been published again in 2005. Frankfurt claims the difference is that a liar acknowledges the truth because he takes the effort to misrepresent the information, while the bullshitter mixes fact and fiction because, for him, the truth is beside the point. His only concern is a story that fits his world view or persona and he crafts his rhetoric purely to impress his audience. Frankfurt states that the amount of "bullshit" information increased through the use of advertisements, politics, and the 24-hour news cycle. He claims that people talk about things they do not know much about, expressing views that are therefore not valid, but which are what their audience want to hear. Frankfurt wonders why society is so tolerant towards these bullshitters. If this is considered normal, it undermines a fundamental respect for truth (Frankfurt, 2005). In his writing and interviews he is quite subtle in his political examples. Journalist Lindsay Beyerstein is more direct. She claims:

The structure of political complaints is basically the personification of Frankfurtian Bullshit (Beyerstein, 2018).

I agree with Frankfurt that the 24 hour news cycle has an effect on the quality of information. Nevertheless, there are sincere journalists who help us reclaim the truth from the bullshit -- for example CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour who says 'Truth is not somebody's truth, the truth is not morphable. There are empirical facts in this world, either you are going to believe them and then make your opinion, elsewhere. But one cannot dispute there are facts!' (College Tour, 2017) I do not doubt Amanpour's passion and her faith in truth. But if we read the theory of The Propaganda Model from Manufacturing Consent (1988) written by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, we must keep in mind that Amanpour, subconsciously or not, is biased. There was an interesting debate between Noam Chomsky and journalist Andrew Marr that illustrates Chomsky's view that most journalists attached to corporate enterprises serve an agenda (The big idea, 1996). Marr, who believes journalists should be independent and unbound by the expectations of their editors and readers, sees himself as an honest unbiased journalist and was inspired by the Watergate affair. During the interview, Chomsky asserts that the major newspapers, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, are corporations who have a product and a market. Their product is their privileged audience whom they are selling to the advertisers. Chomsky refers to the writer George Orwell's essay Literary Censorship in England where Orwell points out two reasons why unpopular ideas can be silenced without force. The first reason is that the press is owned by wealthy men, and the second is that journalists have a self-filtering system. This begins in kindergarten, he says, where the educational system teaches one that there are certain things one cannot say. Andrew Marr took this statement quite personally as it suggested that he self censors. Chomsky simply replied that people like Marr are promoted because of their conformist behaviour and believes that Marr has a very self serving view, claiming he stands up against corruption. There is also a way to use media in a tactical manner, to overtake media. Some artists play with language as a strategy, by inserting information into familiar vocabulary to create awareness of a topic. Artist duo The Yes Men created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos have done this for many years, analysing and presenting themselves using a certain language to be accepted by a target market and to create attention. For example, they created a website representing the company DOW Chemicals who took over Union Carbide and who were responsible for the catastrophe of Bhopal in 1984. The company completely dissociated itself from legal and moral responsibility. Twenty years after the disaster the BBC asked the company if they would finally clean up their mess. The BBC wasn't aware they had actually asked The Yes Men, who, pretending to represent Dow Chemicals, claimed full responsibility and stated that Dow would fully compensate the victims with medical care for their entire lives. After a few hours, the hoax was revealed, when The Yes Men admitted the fraudulence, claiming that their intention was public awareness for the plight of the victims. (The Yes Men Fix the World, 2008) Other artists who use strategies of insurgence are the trio of Heba Amin, Caram Kapp and Don Karl, who presented themselves as The Arabian Street Artists, using the television series Homeland as a stage. The producers of this American spy thriller about Carrie Mathison, a CIA case officer assigned to the Counterterrorism Center, are not so accurate with framing the current political issues. They often create inaccurate storylines by mixing facts and fiction. The artists explain on their website: 'The very first season of Homeland explained to the American public that Al Qaida is actually an Iranian venture. According to the storyline, they are not only closely tied to Hezbollah, but Al Qaida even sought revenge against the US on behalf of Iran. This dangerous phantasm has become mainstream "knowledge" in the US and has been repeated as fact by many mass media outlets. (Amin, Kapp and Karl, 2015) At the beginning of June in 2015, a friend of the artists had been contacted by Homeland's production company to create Arabian Street Art for the upcoming film production in Berlin. They took this opportunity to make a point by subverting the message using the show itself. With graffiti such as 'Homeland is racist' and ' Homeland is a joke, and it didn’t make us laugh'

The TV series was unknowingly critiquing itself. The Guardian called it An elegant stunt (Phipps, 2015) and it raised a lot of awareness and discussion within the public. I consider this a valuable achievement of the artists. It draws attention to the responsibility of research with a critical attitude. These artists lie in a noble manner to create awareness of an issue. They analyse the vocabulary that the public is comfortable with and then use a similar language to get attention for their point of view. Thus a receiver has to consider the agenda of the sender and the rhetorical tools that are being used. This is not the responsibility of the sender. If there is a benefit to be gained by offering bullshit, then it is their prerogative to do so.