How propaganda blurs the clear vision and clouds thinking

It seems that many media today no longer see their task in informing their readers, listeners and viewers through factual reporting about events that affect the coexistence of people in their own country and worldwide. Not only is there hardly any separation between commentary and reporting, but the texts are prepared with different methods or opinion-steering, with which the view of the essential is to be clouded and clear thinking is to be obscured. It is therefore no coincidence that more and more people are sceptical about the so-called “quality media”. In the review of Johannes Menath’s book “Moderne Propaganda” (Modern Propaganda) (Current Concerns No 6 of 28 March 2023), this topic has already been addressed. In the following, some of the methods used to steer opinion are presented in more detail.

Monopolisation – create illusory truth

It is right for attentive readers to become suspicious when looking at different media because of the uniform reporting and assessment of an issue. Media corporations can abuse their monopoly position and only distribute desired news filtered by news agencies or even censored news. They try to use this propaganda trick to create a pseudo truth that must not be questioned: “If everyone says the same thing, it must be true!” In doing so, they deny their actual mission of presenting different views and perspectives on an event in an objective manner and providing the reader with balanced, multi–layered information as a basis for forming his or her own opinion. Unwanted observations, experiences or logical considerations are concealed or dismissed as coincidence and subjective opinion. Such one–sided reporting is manipulative and authoritarian, because it not only pretends to possess the sole truth, but at the same time devalues dissenters as a minority to be neglected. This condemns different perspectives as disruptive, denies equal discourse, prevents the free formation of opinion and ultimately undermines the foundations of a democratic constitutional state. This authoritarian attempt to steer opinion must be countered by seeking first–hand information and alternative sources.¹

Pseudo-debates –
preventing an honest discussion

“Pseudo debates” attempt to disguise the monopolisation of opinion–forming in order to divert attention from critical questions and maintain the illusion of free discourse. In the field of education, such a pseudo–debate took place a few years ago when it was a question of introducing a second foreign language already in primary school. The discussion revolved around whether it should be French or English. People who rejected early foreign language teaching altogether and pointed to the priority of German lessons to remedy the inadequate German language skills of a considerable proportion of our children and young people did not have their say.
  Independent studies such as the one by Professor Simone Pfenninger were also ignored, which could clearly prove that early foreign language teaching has no advantages whatsoever, because in the upper school lessons that begin later, the initial head start is made up for in a short time. The outcome of the debate was therefore clear from the outset and could not have an undesirable outcome – a pseudo-debate.²

Infantilisation –
suppress critical thinking

This method aims to suppress critical thinking by addressing the adult addressees as if they were immature children who need to be protected and saved from overwhelming situations and decisions.
  They are subtly told that they are not in a position to make or judge political decisions and that the “paternal power” of the government must take over this task in their place. Indirectly, they are labelled as dependent, authority-deficient, uneducated and uncritical subjects. The Swiss media like to use the argument of “excessive demands” when referenda are not in favour of lobby groups that behave like elites. Instead of independent thinking and decision–making, infotainment and an easily comprehensible world view created by propaganda are offered. It further promotes the process of infantilisation and can create a fatalistic attitude and disenchantment with politics among those affected, which awakens and perpetuates in them the call for a strong hand.³

Pacing and Leading –
laying a false trail

Various findings from psychological research are misused to steer opinion. This includes “pacing and leading”, which comes from Neuro–linguistic programming (NLP). This technique is used to try to get people to turn away from their own ideas, values and opinions and follow others without realising it. In order to gain the trust of readers, listeners or viewers, the reporting first picks up on existing views and appears to be in agreement with them, then successively takes a turn towards the actual mindset aimed at. Since many people find it difficult to admit that they have allowed themselves to be manipulated, this method of influencing opinion is often successful. The desired messages are also integrated into products of the entertainment and culture industry, behind which hardly any political or ideological influence is suspected. Examples of this are computer games that have a clear friend–foe scheme and reward violence. Music and film can also contain messages that discredit previous values and encourage their transformation. And if people are led to believe over a long period of time that it is normal to wear American clothes, eat American food, listen to American music, watch American films and celebrate American festivals, this is hardly questioned any more. This destroys the common identity and sense of belonging of existing ethnic groups and nations, which is based on common history and tradition.4

Framing and labelling –
steering the thinking along certain lines

These closely related techniques are all about providing a framing, within which the person being addressed is supposed to move and which makes a certain fact or a certain person appear in the desired light. For example, wars are often justified by the desire to bring “freedom and democracy” to the people in the country, i.e. to fight for “human rights”. Another interpretive framework for the same process would be: “We are waging war because we claim for ourselves the raw materials in the enemy’s soil” or “We are waging war to cement our geostrategic supremacy and because we want to establish military bases.” Bombardments euphemistically become “air strikes”, the civilian population killed in the war and destroyed infrastructure become “collateral damage” and the propaganda used to fool the population is simply “public relations” or quite simply PR. Even with evaluative terminology (labelling), an event is integrated into a certain narrative. Certain governments are consistently described with the text module “regime”, at best supplemented by “authoritarian” (for example, when it comes to Syria, Venezuela or Russia), with the aim of immediately provoking a negative emotional mood, in contrast to “kingdoms”, which are intended to evoke a romantic association with fairy tales when it comes to Great Britain, Jordan and, until recently, Saudi Arabia. The same method can of course be used to describe people and groups by talking about “controversial historians” or “sectarian groups” whose opinion is supposed to be a ridiculous or even dangerous conspiracy theory and should therefore not be given any space.⁵

Decontextualisation –
omitting important information

Propaganda agencies and news portals try to create a desirable image by omitting important background information or context. This “decontextualisation” is the complementary technique to “framing”. In this process, the previous history, the larger political framework or even intelligence operations that led to a conflict are concealed. A current example is the war in Ukraine, which cannot be classified without its antecedents. This includes the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine financed by the USA to the tune of five billion dollars – referred to in the mainstream media as the Maidan Revolution – as well as the subsequent discrimination against the Russian population group. Even further back is the classification of Ukraine as a key state for the expansion of US power, as noted by US military strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski as early as 1997. Mainstream reporting glosses over this context in favour of the narrative of an unprovoked war of aggression by the Russian army. The interested contemporary must make such information accessible to himself by seeking sources outside the usual news portals such as AP, Reuters and AFP, which supply the so-called “quality media”, and by reading books that supplement the incomplete reporting with reliable and differentiated information.⁶

Don’t let them stop you from thinking

It is an exciting enterprise to approach today’s methods of opinion control. Unfortunately, there are a multitude of them. Therefore, it is not only exciting but also urgently necessary if we do not want to have the right to our own opinion and independent thinking banned.  •

¹ cf. Menath, Johannes. Moderne Propaganda. 80 Methoden der Meinungslenkung. (Modern Propaganda. 80 methods of opinion steering), Höhr–Grenzhausen: Zeitgeist–Verlag, 2023, p. 18
² cf. op. cit. p. 21f.
³ cf. op. cit. p. 53
⁴ cf. op. cit. p. 31 and p. 107
⁵ cf. op. cit. p. 17 and p. 33
⁶ cf. op. cit. p. 75

Further books on the subject of propaganda and manipulation:

• Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. Trans. Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner. New York: Knopf, 1965. New York: Random House/ Vintage 1973
• Morelli, Anne. Die Prinzipien der Kriegspropaganda. ZuKlampen-Verlag, Springer 2004; (French original: Principes élémentaires de propagande de guerre, 2001).
• Ponsonby, Arthur. Falsehood in Wartime. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co, 1929 (excerpts in:  https://archive.org/details/16FalsehoodInWartime)