Dolores Fesenbek
Don’t Ask Questions?


I. INTRODUCTION
What is it that moves a mass of people down public streets, shoulder to shoulder, singing words to a catchy tune, while they face an armed force of disciplined soldiers with guns, tear gas, Billy clubs and a very real the possibility of violent death? What are the powers crashing through the air and the energy that propels them? In a completely different scene a speaker’s angry voice belts out “Lies, lies, lies” through a megaphone so he could be heard over the chaotic din of the huge crowd packed into the public square. Meanwhile the turbulent, infuriated group chants in response and the surge of tension increases to an explosive pitch .

Contrast these two scenes with the deathly silence of a single-filed string of faceless human beings, shuffling in hunched postures along the side of cold dingy boxcars. The stooped figures hardly needed the sharply prodding bayonets or the gun butts that crashed down on their corpse-like bodies. Even the children in this line were held in an eerie silence as all were slowly forced toward a grim stone building where gas would do the final work against them. These three scenes have a common link in propaganda but there is at least an additional parallel to destruction and possibly death or worse to at least some of the participants.

From a false perspective of insulation due to distance in time and “foreign”-victims the parallel between violence and propaganda seems unimportant or at least a wide distance apart.

II.CURRENT DESENSITIZATION
Although these scenes were taken out of history, they carry current relevance. Propaganda has a potential to be used against people today. Mass media users continue to be vulnerable because there is a prevailing myth that enemies are the only perpetrators of propaganda. Today there is an acclimation or desensitization to mass media, which open the door to gullibility.

“On average a TV set is on in U.S. Households over 7 hours each day (over 8 hours for homes with cable and subscription services), with the typical adult or child watching 2-3 hours per day, More than they spend on any other activity except working and sleeping (Kubey &Csilszentmihalyi, 1990).” Mass media sources include the Internet, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, the radio and even sources like bus advertising. In an interesting summery of statistics on college students and the Internet: “One-fifth (20%) of today’s college students began using computers between the ages of 5-8. Whatever the source, we are bombarded with huge amounts of information and live hard-pressed lifestyles. What information establishes reality?

III. QUESTION, WHY?

http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html

If this is not a picture like their dad,
what school age child thru college students
will look at this picture without picking up
an imaginary or symbolic gun
and shooting?
If this is a picture like their dad
what elementary to college student will
will respect the man?
If this picture is read by the viewer,
what reader will not laugh with derision
if they are not in the military?Is this
“the”
view?

IV. AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE PAST
In an idyllic scene, two men are casually engaged in conversation. The scene is breathtakingly beautiful. A wide a camera lens occasionally shifts focus from the men to the stunning panoramic view of the snow capped, mountains in the background. The scene is one of serenity and refinement except for the open area in the midst of the trees. A view is tastefully given of Hippler’s elegant home nestled amongst the snow-capped peeks with a glow of sunrise colors covering all in sight.

A fertile valley below is shadowed slightly by the majestic peeks, while an invigorating breezes feather hair across the brows of the two men standing on the terrace. Both men appear completely absorbed as Bill Moyer interviews Fritz Hippler. This scene is from the video WWII: the Propaganda Battle. In this video,Moyer paints 17-year-old Fritz Hippler, who enthusiastically wins many of his schoolmates over to the student Nazi party. By age 30, in 1939, he is head of the “entire German film industry.” Hippler shares the “secrets” of his success, which are big lies, simplicity, and repetition, daily reputation. His films Campaign in Poland and Victory In The West illustrate these propaganda principles, which were “to arouse German pride and to frighten other nations with German military might.” Hippler quotes Adolph Hitler’s “big lies are more believable than little lies,” and explains the --“ big lie”-- Poland was invaded to free oppressed Germans citizens who suffered atrocities under polish rule. Hippler declared that intelligent Germans were persuaded, because “people want to hear things and events that are agreeable to them”, which them vulnerable.

Moyer then shifted to interviews Frank Capra, America’s corresponding master propagandist. Moyer began Capra’s interviews with a reminder of a few of Capra’s classical award winning films still in circulation: It happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life and Meet John Doe. In 1941, Capra was 45 years old before he was enticed into the American propaganda war machine. He began his propaganda career by plagiarizing German work—“I decided to take all their work and turn it back on them, use it against them.” Thus begins a comparison of Hippler and Capra propaganda films. Brief frames from each man’s movies were shown. Hippler’s The Eternal Jew film clips were shown with the movie narrator’s voice, “Jews are rats that need to be exterminated to make German streets safe for all Germans.” Hippler acknowledged a responsibility “I must live with because it is my name at the bottom of the film” and a frame was shown of his name. He bears no guilt; he clarifies, because he was just doing a highly prestigious job in Germany, for Hitler that also carried with it certain dangers to him personally.

The rest of this video WWII: The Propaganda Battle is a documentary of the different works each man produced during the war. Capra’s The Triumph of the Will, Why We Fight was compared with Hippler’s the Eternal Jew. Once Capra had viewed Germany’s propaganda films, Capra admitted, “I could see where the kids of Germany would go any place and die for this man.” Flashes of clips were shown to substantiate Capra’s claim and he told a story about getting a whole warehouse of films from a “little Italian man” under the noses of the competition at the time.

V. SHORT ANAYNALSIS
Moyers screens out the consequence of propaganda. He takes an almost pollyanna approach to the subject and makes new associations that are all “nice and clean.” Three million people were tortured and murdered just because they were of the Jewish race. Viewers born after the trials died down would not consider this significant from the documentary. Also they might consider the fact that information given in documentary style that suspends disbelief . As Hippler said of propaganda: “We only showed the good sides and not the dangers.”

Much of the message in this video is conveyed in the surrounding environment as well as the actual words. This is consistent with messages that attempt to alter or lead the audience so that information will be “interpreted in certain limited ways” Scenic views, elegantly furnishes rooms, background noises like the rustling breeze, quiet voices and music in contrast to the film clips’ music and voices all promoted aura of refinement. In the WWII propaganda clips each of the frames had catchy tunes with short words, paired with quick action pictures, today’s teachers are aware of the need to present information using as many senses as possible to facilitate learning. Using Hippler and Capra, antagonist, during the war gave false impression that a comprehensive picture of propaganda was presented, to hid the simplification of propaganda. . There was a deliberate attempt to soften Hippler’s name and the aftermath of his propaganda. Why?

VI. PROPAGANDA EMPHASIS
The deliberate manipulations of great numbers of people for targeted attitude and actions, which are possibly combination of truth with lies or are “big lies” leave the individual with a significant loss of humanity. One of the keys to propaganda is the impact information and ideas have on the masses. It “makes a new collective memory and a new representation” of reality.
Terence H. Qualter expand this with:

∑Propaganda approaches behavior through the modification of attitudes, rather than through direct intimidation, force or bribery. Propaganda assumes that attitudes are the primary source of opinions and behavior. … The goal is to translate belief into action. Propaganda is linked to the audience through significant symbols."

VII. WHY IS PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVE?
One of the reasons may have to do with the sneer present when the word propaganda is verbalized. There is a fallacy that propaganda comes only from enemies, which tends to suspend questions. Combine the eroded inclination to question, overload in the sheer volume of information, with persistent mass media communications and there is a greater potential for people to become participants in the destructive kinds of attitudes and behaviors inherent in propaganda. Attempts throughout history to annihilate whole races of people are not a new phenomenon. The easy access to immediate and constant communication sets people up for violent, mindless explosions of rage. Their individual scruples have been removed long before the huge numbers gather into areas too small to hold their great number. In these surroundings there are people who rouse the tensions of the crowd and bring back the memories carefully nurtured by the propaganda already planted in the minds. Thus a conscienceless, energized beast emerges – the mass who believes themselves to be indestructible. All it would take is one charismatic, astute leader and the masses would go anywhere and do anything, as directed! Hippler made the claim that the bigger the lie the more effective the propaganda.

VIII. A PHYSICAL LINK?
Could there also be a connecting link between the physical learning processes of the brain and the nature of propaganda that builds some type of momentum, or automatic bypass that interferes with an individual’s reasoning ability? For instance dose the brain’s physical mechanisms for selectively focuses on one thing like chanting songs block the brain from higher reasoning? In the physical fight or flight responses of the body the body partitions off some functions to prepare for more efficient responses could the brain have some system of the like responses in its internally operation? Elenor MacLean said that
“The brain’s efficiency depends on the fact that it sifts and chooses all sense perceptions and gives them an order and structure. When we focus on an object, of necessity we are not focusing on other objects. Selectivity is a basic and necessary fact of life for survival.”

For one of the effective components of propaganda is the success its perpetrators have in coercing the masses into attitudes or actions, which meet malevolent agendas. Could terms like “brainwashing” had a base for the blindness cloaking reason, actions, responsibilities and consequences.

Briefly, neurologists have determined that the brain is composed of neurons which are organized in “clumps and layers” to accomplish the work of making sense of the world. These neurons form complex connections by “budding cellular projections that grow into long slender extensions” that connect to “appropriate” neurons and form junction or synapse that break and reform throughout the entire lifetime. These neurons form pathways for every message transported through the brain. The pathways that are used the most are the ones that survive. In a five-series research experiment on cerebral hemispheres, vision and memory report the first experiment was set up “To produce a stronger memory trace, this orienting task was repeated a second time with each pattern represented in the same location.” One of the conclusions was that the process of recalling the information required reactivation of brain areas in specific steps used in the original formation using different patterns of lines (Gratton, Corballis 1994). Could this mean that there is a link between repetition and simplicity in propaganda because other factors like other senses, emotions and current activity complicate the storing and recall processes involved in memory? The changes in horizontal presentation of visual patterns impaired the ability to recognize visual patterns as opposed to changes in vertical direction. According to this article the data and the theoretical speculations presented are consistent with the idea that successful retrieval of visual memories may require the re-activation of brain areas used during the initial encoding (Gratton, Corballis 1994). Is this a possible contributory factor in the question: why short simple messages are the most effective? A more complex message has greater possibility of diverting to different layers of response and even generating the possibility of questions? In a more recent article about perception learning task:

“it has been suggested that sensory input is matched against memory representations … With respect to the visual system, it was suggested that distinct regions of information processing remain segregated throughout higher areas in the brain and can be divided into two streams of information processing (Tootell et al, 1996: Zeki, 1993: Livingstone & Hubel, 1988)

… Furthermore object knowledge seems to be stored in a distributed neural network in which information about specific features is stored close to the regions of the cortex that mediates the perception of those features, (Ungerleider, 1995; Roland et., 1990).

IX. GROUP LOYALITIES?
Another reason propaganda is so effective is a human element. In a speech given by Mary Ellen Hillaire here at Evergreen campus, she said, “How people learn to live with one another, establishing a value system, designing relationships or culture and establishing a freedom of attitude will allow people to address the three concepts – identity, group loyalty and individual authority.” Propaganda takes advantage of people’s needs and uses it against them. Another writer, J. Hoberman, said of propaganda:

"an idea consumed by millions …can also be a source of group identity. United before the same vision, enthralled by a common illusion, a populace might well believe itself to be a nation. The historian Benedict Anderson has described this vast audience as an imagined community; Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “Global Village” to describe its imagined intimacy."

X. PROPAGANDA IN THE MASSES?
The first picture in the introduction– a mass of people down public streets, shoulder to shoulder, singing words to a catchy tune, while they face an armed force of disciplined soldiers with guns, tear gas, Billy clubs and a very real the possibility of death? This scene was taken from a series of coordinated videos and books documenting the fight of African-Americans for the same rights as “white” Americans. It is a story from the eyes of black men, women and children who walked under unjust shackles. Public activity included: bus boycott, march to Montgomery, and the mass meeting to elect a delegation for the Democratic convention in 1967 and many more incidents from the history of the civil rights movement. A study of these events opened the door to an idea that it is possible for the masses to gather and with rigorous training: to act collectively in nonviolent gatherings. In spite of these peoples’ nonviolent position some were killed and others brutally assaulted. One African-American man shares his view of the (war in the land of the free)

“WE REFUSE TO CONFORM … to certain standards, which became predominant in the 19th century. We have refused continually to admit the right of difference, the type of education, the standards and ideals in literature and art, the methods of government must be brought very largely to one single white … standard.”

This battle waged against injustice is propaganda only because it is an attempt to change the attitudes and practices of a majority mass. It is unique compared to the form propaganda usually takes. No attempt was made to change mass views or actions by subterfuge or subtle means. The actions of the initiators are direct and confrontational at the points of contact. There was no attempt to foist secret agendas on unaware “victims.” Plus, one goal was to alert or educate the majority not to trick by sleuth. In hindsight, also it is clear the “perpetrators” actually shared actual oppressive realities not a false contrived one. However, it is threatening to the dominant mass’ privileges and involves attempts to force the dominant mass into behaviors that are perceived to be unfavorable to them—thus force is the response of frustration. If the minority mass had acted out of ignorance this would have been propaganda, instead of the exception

The second scene painted in the introduction is not so clear because of discussions from a few of the participants who were looking back almost twenty years later. In this scene a speaker’s angry voice belts out “Lies, lies, lies” through a megaphone so he could be heard over the chaotic din of the crowd poring into the streets (after classes?). He is standing on the roof of a car bellowing out short message, designed to unite the growing crowd of students, in rebel against the censorship of “free speech” and the ejection of a fellow student from campus? Some of the people at Berkeley who had been involved as students or faultily in the converging movements of the Black Panthers, the antiwar protests and the women’s rights movement had some concerning things to say. Michael Rossman, a student from the Berkeley campus in1966, said, “The white left was confused about who it was and what it was they were suppose to do. And I think they were fascinated by this tough mucho image and they followed it not so much willfully but involuntarily because it was the projection out there of the thing in their own actions that thrilled them most.” Another student and the co-founder of Black Panthers, Bobby Seal said, “We had captured the imaginations of the white radical left so much that it came to the point that its whole identification became connected with what the black panther party was doing, It was like we influenced them in whatever direction we thought they should go.” Hardy Frye another student said “I don’t really like the words suck up but they were awed by the black panthers because we were somehow confronting the white power structure in some way like they would have liked to have done. Some of them, but not all the whites who stopped the draft, those who were involved early, were skeptical as I was but no one of course would say any of these publicly. I mean you didn’t need the hassle. So what a lot of us did, with political experience dropped out or stepped to the side and disappeared.”

These interviews are only a small portion of the documentary but they are statements made with semi-formal dress, which suggests at least some time to prepare the speeches. What originally were peaceful “sit ins” turned violent and as one protester said “out of hand.” It was obvious the students blamed the campus administrators, then, the city police and finally national guards as each group became involved. According to the video, water from fire hoses, drugging students by their clothes, and in a few cases demonstrators spent time in jail. In many of the scenes a central figure stood above the crowd directing activities, and chanting slogans. A couple of the women, in recounting the events, took on a glow when addressing the issue of power. Early in the video a couple people said the students would stay up all night in preparation for events instead of doing their class assignments. Where these events designed to work up emotions or energy? Did some, many or most of the students just join the demonstrations because everyone was doing it? How did they get their information (“So-and-so was a pig? Or a liar: as the speaker on the megaphone chanted?) Was this a possible example of propaganda use or did it just get out of hand? To capture another brief view and add to a general understanding of the environment at the time:

CBS broadcast the hour-long documentary The Berkeley Rebels, which gave a platform to several students’ radicals. Michael Rossman baffled his interviewer by suggesting—at age twenty-five—that he was something other than an adult and claiming that his generation had “no ideology” beyond the realization that “society stinks.” But it was the glimpse of the graffito MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR that startled one reviewer. “What will these kids think of next?” Reality seemed increasingly elastic.

The question is: did most, some; a few participants or any students ask themselves any question? Each participant will have to determine for him or herself

XI. GOVERNMENT, SCEPTISM / PROPAGANDA
In today’s governmental arena the buzzword is terrorism. Homeland Security with Red and Yellow alerts follow in the wake of the 444 day hostage crisis in 1979, the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building in 1995, the 9, 11 destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001and more recently the capture of Ayatollah Khomeini. There is a great deal of information about governmental involvement with propaganda. Even in the mainstream there is a great deal of disbelief toward anything the government might publish, say or do. Elections will be coming up soon and questions will be helpful in digging below the surface gloss.



http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html

XI. APPLICATION FOR TODAY?
Two teachers have asked: “Who has the power and how do they use it?” Is there any way to prevent us from being sucked into propaganda blindness? Probably the people in Germany were like any other people but Hitler used them without any regard for them or the Jewish race. If anything we are more susceptible to propaganda because we encounter so much more information, which is already directed to masses and involves some conditioning of individual lens. At some point we rely on others to give true and accurate information. Plus there is not really time to verify so much of what we hear or to shift through to facts. Propaganda was taken one step further in Nazi Germany during WWII; there was no changing the mind already made up for you. In Hippler’s day there were SS men who made sure those at the theater who didn’t respond correctly, disappeared. Most of our messages are in some way “packaged” the actual content of a message is only part of the overall message we receive.

XII. Questions and Key Words

To see if the content and packaging of information is reliable Mac Lean suggests five questions:

1. Who is the source?
2. What knowledge do they have?
3. What techniques of persuasion are they using?
4. What is their motive?
5. Is this a conventional or unconventional position?

In another study of propaganda there are two lists of words which GOP candidates were told to use in speeches. One list is positive words to use in reference to self and the other list is to use for opponents.

Lists to use for themselves: Children, choice/choose, citizen, commitment, common, sense, compete, confident, conflict, control, courage, crusade, debate, dream, duty, eliminate, active (ly), activist, building.candid (ly), care, challenge, change, good-time, in prison, empower (ment), environment, fair, family, hard work, help, humane, incentive, initiative, lead, learn, legacy, listen, mobilize, moral, movement, opportunity, passionate, peace, pioneer, precious, premise, preserve, principle (d), pristine, pro-(issue), prosperity, protect, proud/pride, provide, reform, rights, share, strength ,success, tough, truth, unique, vision, we/us/our, workfare.

Lists for the opposition: Compassion is not enough, anti- (issue), betray, coercion, collapse, consequences, corruption, crisis, decay deeper, destroy, destructive, devour, endanger, failure, greed, hypocrisy, ideological, impose, incompetent, insecure, liberal, lie, limits, pathetic, permissive, attitude, radical, self-serving, sensationalists, shallow, sick, they/them, threaten, traitors.

XIII. CONCLUDING ASSESSMENT
The study of propaganda has made some issues more complex, while making others more clear. Incomplete, incorrect, out of context, even out of date information--how do these “lies” impact information? Do they change perception, reception, or credibility if they are detected? Where are the boundaries between bias and truth? How much time should be devoted to distinguishing truth? Is it important how big or little a lie is? How important is truth? Propaganda is a complex issue, which has shaded of application and meaning. A wise “student of life” asks questions. What the questions should be and how deep, is a continuous selection. History has shown it is necessary, today.

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