Propaganda has a complicated history and relationship with the West, shaped by ideological presumptions, moral and ethical evaluations, definitions, and assumptions. These frameworks have the effect of producing dilemmas and contradictions within an idealised conception of society. In part, this is due to embedded assumptions about identity and the cultural myths that accompany idealised notions of a morally and socially superior Western society. Such myths function to construct the façade of a value- and ethics-based consensus, reinforcing in-group identity and cohesion as a means of generating political unity. At the same time, they define and contrast this in-group against an oppositional out-group perceived as lacking the ‘desired’ mythical attributes of a ‘good’ society.
One of the enduring myths of Western propaganda, which virtue signals the assumed values and ethical principles of a so-called democracy as an in-group, is that democracies do not engage in propaganda. This myth is based on the assertion that the values and virtues of free human will are cherished, where facts and reality prevail in a rational and informed society. Conversely, non-democracies are presented as the idealised out-group that regularly engages in heavy-handed and overt propaganda to prime and manipulate their ‘unfree’ population. The in-group is often thought to be virtuous and ethical while the out-group is subversive to the free human will and spirit: emotional logic dictates loyalty and empathy for the in-group, suspicion and fear of the named out-group.
This fear, of something bad happening and the personal aspect of it happening to you, is driven by mainstream politics and media. Fear is the first step toward compliance. A false sense of unity is driven by the façade of an external threat to an idealised projection of democracy in Western society and the notion that it is under threat from the propaganda of authoritarian forces seeking destroy the presumed cultural and identity foundations of ‘our’ society. See, for example, recent hyperbole about “anti-democratic propaganda” taking over the world.
However, does this cognitively nice and neat image reflect reality? Far from it. There are those who admit propaganda was an invention of the West, that it is a ‘necessary’ tool for the effective governing of democratic society, and that it is the very foundation of liberal democracy. Adolf Hitler admired the ‘quality’ and effects of British propaganda in the First World War to such an extent he praised its excellence in a chapter of his autobiography Mein Kampf. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels also admired the quality of Western propaganda, such as Hollywood Westerns. He also infamously quipped that the West accuses its opponent of that which they are guilty of doing.
However, in the wake of the Cold War and the general march into the era of what some term as the New Cold War, there is a distinct decline in the quality and effectiveness of Western propaganda. The New Cold War concerns the growing geopolitical tensions between the in-group ‘democracies’ of the Global North and the out-group ‘autocracies’ of the Global South (especially China, Iran and Russia). The motivation is to justify and legitimise a desperate, reckless, and increasingly militarised foreign policy of the West, one which requires political capital and public consent, or at least no significant resistance. Western mainstream political leaders from the liberal democracies lack public approval and consent and are the most unpopular generation according to opinion polls. The propaganda used by Western leaders to justify and legitimise an increasingly aggressive stance against China, Iran and Russia, as a means to contain and weaken these three pillars of the Global South, is ever more heavy handed and overt.
In its current iteration of desperation and decline of operational standards and effects, Western propaganda now seems akin to the satirical anti-war masterpiece Dr Strangelove. Unfortunately, the stakes are increasingly high for the world as compromised and incompetent political leaders seek to maintain an idealised public image and retain their political office, and the Western geopolitical hegemony desperately seeks to cling to its 500 years of a leading global role. Both of these aspirations have run out of time and talent, but the show must go on!
The propaganda of fear is being cultivated to maximum levels among publics throughout the Western world, and especially in the EU and US. This no longer concerns the positive propaganda of attraction, but the negative propaganda of fear and hatred. Furthermore, following Edward Bernays observation in 1947, there is no coincidence in terms of the timing and nature of this propaganda masquerading as news. The engineering of public consent as a means to prime and mobilise mass public audiences for an act that contradicts their objective interests is well under way.
There is a great deal of Orwellian influence in the language of vague wordings used to construct the Russian ‘threat’ – both in military and ideological terms. There is a “good” practical reason and desired outcome for this approach, which is that the sloppy, vague, and dishonest language actively corrupts the public’s ability to think clearly, which in turn enables political oppression and propaganda to be conducted. There are numerous examples of this, such as Russian “grey zone activities,” or “hybrid warfare,” and the threat of a Russian invasion of the whole of Europe should Ukraine lose the war. Here the propagandists refer to Ukraine as a “shield” for Europe, the same terminology used by Nazi Germany’s “crusade against Bolshevism”.
These propaganda constructions of the Russian ‘threat’ make use of fear, card stacking and bandwagoning – An information environment of selective information that is attempting to create a herd mentality, where emotional and knee-jerk decisions are engineered in the interests of the communicator. These desired emotional reactions are objectively against the audience being primed and mobilised. The basis of fear in the audience is to be operationalised to push the ‘solution’, a reckless and aggressive policy.
That policy is to prepare for war with Russia, even if the West is not in a financial or industrial position to effectively do so. Thus, the propaganda narrative is regularly repeated in the “speak with one voice spirit” by the political and media establishment. This includes a massive rearmament programme in an economy that is deindustrialising and running out of public funds, and where the standard of living is dropping and the cost of living rising. A war with Russia is presented as being imminent and inevitable, which among other things requires the public to be “psychologically ready” or, in other words, in an emotional state of fear and compliant to the state dictates. Even though citizens are not willing to fight and die for the vanity of the political establishment and a hegemon in severe decline, conscription is pushed as being necessary and a collective duty of citizens. Various countries are bringing back conscription amidst this massive propaganda campaign of fear, attempting to psychologically groom their citizens who lack the will to fight and lack trust in the political system. This is exemplified in the outrageous demand by politician Jacob Rees-Mogg that Britons need to do their duty to fight and die for the British government, a regime that has actively worked against the objective interests of its country and its people.
Every propagandistic accusation by the West regarding the alleged imminent and inevitable Russian threat reads more like a confession, as noted by Goebbels many years ago. The Western propaganda is not up to the same standards that it used to be when it was so much admired by Hitler; it has become everything that democracies have accused non-democracies of doing and being in terms of their idealised myths and notions of binary constructions of culture and identity between the in-group (liberal democracy) and the out-group (authoritarian). It comes at a time of Western political and geopolitical decline and, as the war in Ukraine seems to be in the process of decisively moving towards a Russian victory on the battlefield, this means that time is short and desperation is setting in to try and save imagined political reputations and a geopolitical hegemony that is all but lost.
(Featured Image: “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)” by twm1340 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)
