Wake up - you are being deceived by propaganda!

By: Clement Knox / The Daily Telegraph
Translation: Telegrafi.com

"The Nazis have four combat services," says a film produced by the British Ministry of Information in 1941: "Land, Sea, Air and PROPAGANDA." The meaningfully titled film, Film as a weapon, went on to argue that "through press, radio and film, the legend of the [Nazi] dictatorship was put in place" and that "press, radio and film can help our armed forces to destroy that legend and reassert the teaching of democracy". This realization of the media power struggle is typical of how we understand propaganda today—as something that states did during the great wars of the distant past, not as something they continue to engage in today.

Scott Anthony's fascinating new book, History of British propaganda film, challenges these assumptions. It would have been easy enough to write a book on British propaganda that was limited to the two world wars. Anthony begins there, locating the origins of modern propaganda in the mobilization of British society that began in 1914, and does an excellent job of exploring how cinema was used in the interwar period and then, after 1939, to manage measures. This was, according to him, the "heroic" phase of British propaganda, used to wage two wars and announce the arrival of the welfare state.

The Crown Film Unit, for example, produced two films about the bombings: London can endure! (1940) and Christmas under fire (1941). These were light, journalistic and sentimental – perfect for their American target, whom Britain hoped to persuade to take up arms. After hostilities ended, Humphrey Jennings produced films such as A diary for Timothy (1945) and History of the Cumberland (1947), which praised the National Insurance Act and the nationalization of the coal industry. What Anthony sees as common in these various efforts was the shared commitment of "artists, intellectuals and activists to use media technology to create cross-class enthusiasm for an idea of ​​Britain as a modern democratic state".

It would have been easy to write about British propaganda limited to the two world wars, but Anthony's analysis does not end there. On the contrary, he claims that a second, "total" phase followed in the late 50s, which aimed to calm the "stress and psychological disorder" of modern life. Propaganda efforts were no longer limited to communicating with the people on specific issues such as rationing or recruitment. Instead, it became the standard way of communication between authorities and citizens. Where the citizen was once seen as a friend of the state's benevolent efforts to improve society, now, Anthony writes, he was seen—and still is—more like an unstable patient who cannot be trusted to take government "medicine" .

This view may seem paranoid, but Anthony has the evidence. "Communication" is now one of the four pillars of government. Under the doctrine of New Labour, the budget for the Central Information Office rose from £37 million in 1993 to £530 million in 2010. They subsidized television programs such as Rhythm: Life on the road and United Kingdom Border Force, which offered a positive vision of the functioning of the government. Meanwhile, Westminster became an avid and sophisticated user of marketing techniques to influence the public on issues such as speeding, hooliganism and teenage pregnancy. Thus, the British public space was dominated by "short and commanding slogans delivered with a military conclusion". (See it. Say it. It's solved.)

The pandemic saw this trend reach its peak, with the British government becoming the biggest advertiser in the country. Less intrusive, but equally wide-ranging in impact, were the campaigns launched during the "War on Terror". From 2007, Anthony writes, the government engaged in a "culture war programme", funding films shown in YouTube and universities, which targeted British Muslims who were sensitive to calls for jihad.

The increasing use of information campaigns by the state is potentially dangerous. The basic tenet of modern propaganda is that individuals cannot be trusted to process reality for themselves. Anthony sees this new era of propaganda as more interesting than the military one that preceded it, and argues persuasively that we should all think so: the purpose of an open society, after all, is to allow thought and speech to flourish without obstacle. As Anthony cogently describes, the new propaganda system views that free exchange of ideas and information with great suspicion—and intervenes accordingly. "Even as it is justified as preventive protection," Anthony writes, "it is an ideology that risks dramatically narrowing the space for any kind of democratic scrutiny (let alone dissent) as civilians are drawn into an information war."

Thus, although we are in this second age of propaganda, we have also returned to the 40s, when state messages were used as one of the essential weapons in the government's arsenal. Anthony quotes Marshall McLuhan, who predicted in 1970 that "World War III [will be] a guerrilla war of information, with no separation between military and civilian participation." By this definition, World War III has already begun. We can continue to develop it for a long time in the future. /Telegraph/