Regular html version with links

Jerry Landay
December 8, 2006

The "Civil War" squabble: Waging combat with words

The 'Apparat' that won't go away

Ever since a throng of ex-communist, socialist, and liberal power seekers swung hard right in the 1970s, the brainwashing of American public opinion has been one of the primary goals of so-called movement conservatism. The turncoat leftists, disillusioned by the festering of Democratic power under Nixon, became the founding cadres of the neoconservative action front. They brought with them a long tradition, stretching from the Kremlin to the Vatican, of captivating the masses with the art of inventive phrase-making, hot-button sloganeering, loaded words, and intemperate labels.

The word "propaganda" was adapted from the Vatican's department of "propagandum," the Office for the Propagation of the Faith, devoted to the swelling the ranks of its congregants. The government of Woodrow Wilson pioneered mass propaganda techniques in America during World War I. The Soviets embraced "agitprop," political agitation backed by propaganda to gain influence and power at home, as well as far beyond the Kremlin. The Nazi chief propagandist, Josef Goebbels, displayed the cynical viewpoint of effective propagandists in his diary: "The rank-and-file are usually much more primitive than we imagine." Controlling the language of political disputation to buttress his power agenda was central to Hitler's bid to rule the German people. "Propaganda," Goebbels wrote, "must...always be essentially simple and repetitious."

Here, in the manipulative hands of the neocons and their allies -- social, religious, and corporate conservatives, together with Republican politicians in Congress and the Reagan and Bush White House -- campaigns of linguistic distortion have been waged with shrewdness and unrelenting vigor. Until now, they have been immensely successful. Verbal distortions, flung out upon the airwaves, through the print media and the punditocracy, and in broadsides to members of Congress by the right-radical propaganda machine succeeded in diminishing respect for "liberalism" and converting "liberal" into a dirty word. It has elevated opponents of abortion into a legion of positive values by labeling them "pro-life," which implies that advocates whose first priority is protecting the life of the mother are pro-death.

Wrote Herr Goebbels, "He will achieve basic results in influencing public opinion" by "reducing problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form."

The canny application of Goebbels' propaganda principles to American political discourse has been central to the maintenance of power by the Bush administration. "Stay the course" to empower supporters of the Iraq war, and "cut and run" to tar opponents as traitors, "war on terror" to win a long-term grasp on power by fear-mongering based on "war" without end against Islamic insurgents. Generating fear is the favorite tool of the propaganda trade in controlling large populations.

Unfortunately, such phrase-making can eventually boomerang and inflict unintended consequences upon its creators: these include "Bring 'em on" and "Mission accomplished." But before these phrases did a 180-degree turn and speared the authors, the spinners of the right were able to peddle their wares through two mass distribution networks: first, with 9-11, they gained muscle over the news media. They scared media owners, publishers, and editors -- and, through them, their reporters and writers and newscasters. The culture columnist for TIME Magazine, James Poniewozik, concedes that "the news media was, and is, existentially scared" -- of conservative public opinion, of being frozen out of reportorial access to major government news sources, of end-runs around the national press, with important news and interviews fed to friends of the administration in the right-wing and local press: Fox News and the Washington Times, for example. Poniewozik makes no mention of the profound residual power of the far-right radio-TV talk show circuit--with corporate broadcasting mediarchs hiding behind the First Amendment and their FCC licenses to tilt public opinion to the right.

Moreover, rightwing propagandists funneled their polemical output through an existing network of some 360 or more advocacy groups which share the same oligarchic foundation sources of operating cash and pursue the same agendas. I have called this combined structure The Apparat, a term originally devised by the Soviet leadership to describe the agitprop structure which neocon cadres in the American right later copied.

Housed within the American Apparat are right-wing attack operations that actively wage the fear campaigns against major media. They include Accuracy in Media, L. Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, David Horowitz' David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly Center for the Study of Popular Culture), and countless other such operations on regional and local levels. Also within the Apparat are radical right "think tanks" whose faux-scholars and "experts" -- from the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and other such "policy" outfits -- gain ready access to the airwaves, the print press, and key opinion molders in Congress.

The hissy-fit between the White House and the press over whether the raging civil war in Iraq is actually a "civil war" is really about whether the massive shift of public opinion measured by the November elections represents a weakening of the Bush-Cheney-neocon Apparat -- along with its ability to control the language of American politics -- and a corresponding strengthening of the media's will, rekindled resolve, and independence to think for itself. For good reason, members of the Apparat, including the White House propaganda branch, is far from pleased that its opinion-molding machine may be losing its potency. After three failed years of war, the American public has finally understood that Iraq is indeed bloodily mired in civil war. In fact, Americans so concluded long before the press got around to it. Only after the election results were in did the press, led by the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, followed by NBC, break its dependency on Bush word merchants, weaned itself away from the fearful, conformist pack, and declared that we indeed had a raging civil war on our hands, with U.S. combat troops smack in the middle of the firefight. The New York Times, which prizes its "access" to official sources above all else, is still dithering over the issue.

What the domestic "civil war" of words signifies is that the massive antibiotic of reality has prevailed over the Apparat, and begun to set the agenda again. The propaganda apparatus out in right field is no longer able to spin so freely and effectively. Its fitful, last post-election gasp for the moment was to try to sell the spin that the election numbers really added up to victory for Republican clones with Democratic nameplates, a canned alibi that Americans and the press failed to buy.

But make no mistake about it -- the Apparat is still in business, if somewhat momentarily dazed. This is the movement that successfully impeached Bill Clinton, even though it couldn't make a conviction stick. Its power centers remain intact, despite the Republican loss of Congress and the national crisis of confidence in the Bush administration. The wealthy foundations of the Republican oligarchy that seeded the movement continue generously to feed the American Apparat.

A scan of its universe demonstrates that the apparatus, though presently sputtering, still spins. For example, the Media Research Center continues to nurse the big bruise about NBC's early decision to declare Iraq a "civil war." The movement's latest post-election line is to peddle hope to "the base:" be patient -- the political worm will turn, sooner than you think. Accuracy in Media conspicuously displays this as a prime talking point on its web site: "Could conservative radio talk-show hosts and their allies overcome the power of the liberal media and keep Republicans in control of Congress?" One answer: perhaps the hope has substance -- IF the new Democratic congressional leadership is asleep to the mind-manipulating power of the Apparat. AIM has at least one fresh target: the proposed Al Jazeera English-language cable television service, designed to convey to American audiences the Islamic point of view on world events. Will American cable channels meekly and fearfully refuse to carry it? So far, sadly, the answer is yes.

In this new era, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture has chosen to change its name, elevating founder David Horowitz to sainthood: it will now be known as the 'David Horowitz Freedom Center.' But the new DHFC hews to an old Horowitz aim: to conduct a nationwide purge of liberal professors on college campuses.

The struggle for an open mind against the fear-driven tactics of the authoritarian movement will continue unabated. This much is certain: the hydra-headed voices of the Apparat will be lying in wait to undermine, divide, and conquer a dis-united Democratic Congressional majority, as well as assault the credibility of front-running Democratic presidential hopefuls whose power to retake the White House it most fears. The overriding questions are: will the progressive coalition now on the crest join the battle with vigor for public opinion? How effectively will the Democratic coalition battle against the right-wing Apparat in the struggle for America's hearts and minds?

Jerry Landay writes on current political issues, and is a contributor to Mediatransparency. He was a news correspondent for CBS, and for ABC at the White House during Watergate. He is also a digital image-maker, and his work can be viewed here.