CHAPTER 1

Propaganda

Its Meaning, Operation, and Limits

AMERICAN WAR PROPAGANDA: A HISTORY

Since America’s earliest days, war and propaganda have been intimately connected. Before the Revolutionary War, propaganda was used to shape public opinion in order to unite the colonists against the British. Among the most famous propaganda pieces from this time period is Paul Revere’s 1770 engraving titled “The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street,” which depicted events from the Boston Massacre and was intended to galvanize support against the British. The engraving shows British Captain Thomas Preston standing behind an orderly line of seven Red Coats with his sword raised to indicate an order to fire at the colonists standing before them. The colonists are depicted with looks of fear and sadness on their faces, some lying on the ground in pools of blood. The British soldiers, in contrast, are depicted as enjoying inflicting harm on the colonists.

The image was meant to present the British as the violent aggressors against the passive colonists. Moreover, the massacre was presented as a coordinated and planned effort carried out by the British soldiers at the superior officer’s order. In reality, the Boston Massacre began as a disorderly street fight between American colonists and a single British soldier who called for reinforcements. The situation escalated into bloodshed after colonists antagonized and assaulted the soldiers. A soldier fired into the crowd, and several other soldiers followed suit, killing five colonists and wounding several others. However, there is no formal evidence that Captain Preston ever ordered his men to fire, and all but two of the men involved were acquitted of any wrongdoing. While Revere’s engraving misrepresented the realities of the events surrounding the Boston Massacre, it had the desired effect of rousing anti-British sentiments among the colonists.

Propaganda appeared throughout the revolutionary period and was used during the American Civil War. While the specific content varied, the defining feature of propaganda during this period was that it was highly decentralized. There was no coordinated government effort to develop and disseminate propaganda. Instead, propaganda was produced by a variety of government and private organizations in an uncoordinated and ad hoc manner.1 This changed during the world wars, when propaganda became an institutionalized aspect of the U.S. government’s arsenal.

Soon after entering World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed Executive Order 2594 on April 13, 1917, which established the Committee on Public Information (CPI), also known as the Creel committee. The purpose of the CPI was to systematically influence domestic public opinion in support of the U.S. government’s participation in World War I.² The reach of the CPI spanned numerous media outlets, including newspapers, movies, radio, posters, and short four-minute public talks by trained volunteer orators—the “Four Minute Men.” Its purpose was to frame conscription, economic rationing, war bonds, victory gardens, and other wartime measures in a positive light with the aim of convincing citizens that the various aspects of the government’s war effort, and the sacrifice they entailed, were crucial to the maintenance and extension of America’s core principles.³

The CPI was officially disbanded by executive order in August 1919. A growing backlash against its operations led many in government to make public claims about abandoning the use of war propaganda in the future. This criticism was short lived, however, with the onset of World War II. Over the course of the war, a multipronged apparatus disseminated government-approved information despite an official policy indicating that the government was not to issue propaganda.

On June 13, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9182, which authorized the Office of War Information (OWI).⁴ The purpose of the OWI was to consolidate and distill information related to the war effort. Specifically, the executive order declared that the OWI should “formulate and carry out, through the use of press, radio, motion picture, and other facilities, information programs designed to facilitate the development of an informed and intelligent understanding, at home and abroad, of the status and progress of the war effort and of the war policies, activities, and aims of the Government.”5 The OWI, which was split into domestic and international branches, had near monopoly control over the dissemination of war-related information. Through its various operations, the OWI sought not just to provide information to American citizens but to do so in a manner that would encourage public support for the government’s war activities.

A separate but related part of the wartime propaganda apparatus was the Writer’s War Board (WWB), established in December 1941 at the urging of the U.S. Treasury Department. The board was privately organized and operated, meaning it did not have a formal government budget (although the government subsidized the writer’s offices and staff). This private civilian status, however, should not be mistaken for independence from government influence. The WWB operated through the OWI and served as a “liaison between American writers and U.S. government agencies seeking written work that will directly or indirectly help win the war.”⁶ Indeed, the WWB “received governmental funding and functioned, according to one member, as ‘an arm of the government.’”⁷ In total, the WWB leveraged the skills of around five thousand writers who sought to influence public opinion through a wide range of media outlets, including newspapers, magazines, books, and radio.⁸

The operations of the OWI and WWB were complemented by other government-sponsored propaganda. For example, the U.S. government commissioned Academy Award–winning filmmaker Frank Capra to direct a series of documentaries, under the general title Why We Fight, to justify America’s involvement in the war to soldiers and the general public. Following the end of World War II, the operations of the OWI and WWB ceased. But that was not the end of U.S. government propaganda.

In 1948 Congress passed the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act (Public Law 80-402), also known as the Smith-Mundt Act, which institutionalized the U.S. government’s foreign propaganda efforts, including Voice of America, the largest U.S. international multimedia broadcasting institution. Those concerned with the negative consequences of government propaganda were partially placated by the insertion of a stipulation in the bill that information produced for foreign broadcast was not to be disseminated domestically.

During the Cold War and the Vietnam War the U.S. government operated, and publicly acknowledged, the United States Information Agency (USIA), which was established in 1953 by order of President Eisenhower. The mission of the USIA was “to understand, inform and influence foreign publics in promotion of the national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans and U.S. institutions, and their counterparts abroad.”9 The activities of the USIA were split into four categories. The first dealt with the dissemination of information including taking over the operations of the Voice of America program, that had been approved as part of the aforementioned Smith-Mundt Act. The second dealt with exhibits and cultural products, and the third focused on the publication of print media. The final division focused on motion pictures. The activities of the USIA were subject to the ban on domestic dissemination established under the Smith-Mundt Act. This, however, is not meant to suggest that there was no domestic government propaganda.

Starting in the early 1950s, the U.S. government, under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), began Operation Mockingbird. This large-scale international initiative recruited leading journalists and reporters to serve as spies and to actively disseminate propaganda in support of the American government’s anticommunist efforts at home and abroad.¹⁰

The reach of Operation Mockingbird was extensive, with connections in at least twenty-five American news outlets and wire agencies—including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time magazine—and control over fifty foreign newspapers.¹¹ The program also sought to influence the content of commercial film productions. Operation Mockingbird was a covert operation, meaning that it was not subject to congressional oversight. Similarly, members of the public were unaware of its operations until a series of reports starting in the late 1960s revealed the government’s secretive propaganda efforts to manipulate public opinion.

Also during this time, the Department of Defense (DOD) engaged in a wide range of domestic propaganda activities under the guise of “public relations,” including such things as locating news crews in Southeast Asia to produce newsreels for distribution in the United States, a domestic speakers bureau to facilitate speeches by military and civilian officers in support of the war effort, a publications division to assist with the creation and dissemination of pro-military materials written by members of the armed forces, and a “Projects Division” responsible for providing and coordinating military-related personnel for public events, such as fairs and parades.12 The DOD also ran programs for American civilians to tour and actively participate in interactive demonstrations at its facilities with the aim of connecting with the general public to foster support. The agency also held “freedom forums” throughout the country to “educate” the public regarding threats and U.S. war efforts to address them.¹³

The propaganda activities of the DOD were unchecked by Congress and not subject to the stipulations of the Smith-Mundt Act banning the domestic dissemination of propaganda. As Senator William Fulbright wrote,

It is interesting to compare [the] American government’s only official propaganda organization, the U.S. Information Agency with the Defense Department’s apparatus. USIA is so circumscribed by Congress that it cannot, with the rarest of exceptions, distribute its materials within this country. . . . But the Department of Defense, with more than twice as many people engaged in public relations as USIA has in all its posts abroad, operates to distribute its propaganda within this country and without control other than the executive, and floods the domestic scene with its special, narrow view of the military establishment and its role in the world.¹⁴

It was this expansive, institutionalized propaganda apparatus that so concerned Fulbright. His concerns remain relevant, as what he called the “Pentagon propaganda machine” is alive and flourishing.

A recent report by American Transparency found that over the seven-year period from 2007 to 2014, the U.S. government spent over $4.3 billion on public relations.¹⁵ Further, the report indicates that, based on the number of employees, the U.S. government is the second largest PR firm on the globe. Of the ten federal agencies who spend the most on external PR services, the Army ranked second, spending $255 million, and the Department of the Navy ranked seventh, spending some $80 million. The Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of the Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, and the Missile Defense Agency also ranked in the top fifty contracting agencies.16

While the specific details regarding how this money was spent are not publicly known, what is clear is that the U.S. government continues to spend a significant amount of taxpayer dollars promoting itself to the American public. In addition, as we will discuss throughout this book, the U.S. government’s approach satisfies the distinctive features of the “firehose of falsehood” model of propaganda. This approach consists of a “high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.”¹⁷ As such, Senator Fulbright’s concern that few Americans “have much cognizance of the extent of the military sell or its effects on their lives” remains as valid today as when first raised decades ago.¹⁸

THE MEANING, TECHNIQUES, AND FUNCTIONS OF PROPAGANDA

Propaganda Defined

The term propaganda can be traced back to the 1620s with the establishment of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of Faith) by the Roman Catholic Church to train missionaries. The favorable religious usage of the term, which was not yet part of the popular vernacular, continued through the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century.¹⁹ This changed with World War I, where the usage of the term propaganda became widespread and took on an unfavorable connotation. As journalist Will Irwin notes, “propaganda, before the World War [World War I], meant simply the means which the adherent of a political or religious faith employed to convince the unconverted. Two years later, the word had come into the vocabulary of peasants and ditchdiggers and had begun to acquire its miasmic aura. In loose, popular usage it meant the next thing to a damned lie.”²⁰ Today, this negative connotation remains.

According to the Lexico, propaganda refers to “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.”²¹ Philosopher Randal Marlin defines propaganda as “the organized attempt through communication to affect belief or action or inculcate attitudes in a large audience in ways that circumvent or suppress an individual’s adequately informed, rational, reflective judgement.”22 Similarly, communications scholars Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell emphasize that “propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviors to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”²³

As these definitions suggest, the purpose of propaganda is to shape the views, beliefs, and actions of the target audience so that they align with the goals of the propagandist even if they are at odds with the interests of the recipients.²⁴ As philosopher Jason Stanley argues, “propaganda is characteristically part of the mechanism by which people become deceived about how best to realize their goals, and hence deceived from seeing what is in their own best interests.”²⁵ Propaganda is characterized by its lack of commitment to objective truth and accuracy. “Propaganda’s preoccupation,” write communication scholars Richard Nelson and Foad Izadi, “is with efficiency and not truthfulness.”²⁶ This means that the propagandist may employ half-truths and outright lies as necessary to achieve their ends in the most efficient way possible. While there is a distinction between outright lying, framing information provided in a knowingly biased manner, and providing selective information, each of these actions falls under the broader category of deception. As international relations scholar John Mearsheimer notes, “lying, spinning and withholding information are all forms of deception, and all three can be contrasted with truth telling.”²⁷ It is within this context that propaganda is best understood.

So, while propaganda has numerous definitions,²⁸ for our purposes, the term encapsulates three key characteristics. First, propaganda is purposefully biased or false. Its purpose is to deter people from having access to truthful information. Second, propaganda is used to promote a political cause. Third, propaganda is bad from the perspective of those targeted by the propagandist’s message because it limits their ability to make an informed judgment.

We are fully aware that the use of propaganda extends well beyond matters pertaining to foreign policy, national security, and the military.²⁹ Nonetheless, we limit our focus to U.S. government-produced propaganda related to national security and foreign affairs with a particular focus on the post-9/11 period. We do so for three reasons.

First, those in government are in a privileged position of power. As legal scholar Helen Norton indicates, “the [United States] government is unique among speakers because of its coercive power, its substantial resources, its privileged access to national security and intelligence information, and its wide variety of expressive roles as commander-in-chief, policymaker, educator, employer, property owner, and more.”30 These distinct features create opportunities for those in power to deceive and manipulate the citizenry.

Second, as discussed, propaganda has been intertwined with the U.S. national security state since its earliest days. Historian Susan Brewer notes, “to rally Americans around the flag, officials have manipulated facts, exaggeration, and misinformation” with the aim of persuading people to their position.³¹ Similarly, in his review of government propaganda, Senator William Fulbright noted that “there have been too many instances of lack of candor and of outright misleading statements. . . . Too often we have been misled by the very apparatus that is supposed to keep us factually informed or, in the very strictest sense, honestly guided.”³² Similar tactics continue to be used by the U.S. government, as we discuss in subsequent chapters.

Third, propaganda has played a central role in the U.S. government’s “war on terror.” We therefore take the opportunity to catalog this propaganda and to use it to illuminate the operation of propaganda in democratic political institutions. This exercise offers insight into both key aspects of the ongoing war on terror as well as future efforts by the U.S. government in matters of national security and foreign affairs. The observable costs of the war on terror are significant. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the U.S. government has, through fiscal year 2020, appropriated $5.4 trillion and is obligated to spend at least another $1 trillion on post-9/11 war efforts.³³

Our analysis of propaganda in the post-9/11 period explains how the U.S. government took active steps to convince the American public of the need for this massive spending despite a highly questionable return in terms of increased safety and security.³⁴ In doing so, we make clear how the government’s use of propaganda threatens the efficacy of liberal democratic institutions as a check on political opportunism—actions by those in positions of political power to pursue their own goals at the expense of citizens whose interests they purport to represent.

Propaganda Techniques

There are four common devices employed in the production of government propaganda.35 These techniques aim to appeal to certain beliefs, conditions, attitudes, and emotions in order to persuade the target audience to support and adopt the propagandist’s point of view and desired course of action. In doing so, they attempt to foster unquestioning acceptance by the target audience of the message being communicated by the propagandist.

Appeal to Authority

Propaganda typically includes markings of government authority. This technique is intended to bring credibility to the message being communicated while reinforcing the importance of government as the solution to the threat. For example, government propaganda typically includes images of official seals, names of agencies and political officials, and the nation’s flag as signals of expert authority.

Appeal to Patriotism

Propaganda attempts to foster widespread and vigorous support for the government that, in turn, represents “the country.” This technique links support for a cause or activity to the “common good” of “the country.” Support is associated with advancing the “national interest” while, either directly or indirectly, the absence of support indicates a lack of support for the common good. This device seeks to foster public support for the nation’s armed forces and attempts to create a link to broader support for the government, nation, and war effort. One example of this technique is the Four Minute Men, a group of volunteers authorized by the president who during World War I would speak at public venues to encourage support for the war, including promoting the purchase of “Liberty Bonds” as a way for citizens to demonstrate their patriotism for the government’s war effort. More recently, in 2015, it was revealed that the Pentagon had spent close to $7 million to pay for public patriotic displays during professional sports events to foster national pride among the American populace and to aid in recruitment efforts.

Appeal to “Us versus Them”

This device entails identifying clear, black-and-white distinctions between “in groups”—the nation and its allies—and “out groups”—enemies and their allies.36 It presents the target audience with a simple and clear choice between two conflicting sides with no recognition of nuance or other intricacies. As President George W. Bush bluntly stated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, “every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”³⁷ He made similar statements elsewhere, saying, “Every nation . . . across the world now faces a choice. Nations that choose to support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. . . . Nations that choose to fight terror are defending their own safety and the safety of free people everywhere.”³⁸

This technique also reinforces notions of patriotism, since the in group is “the nation” and the out group refers to “others” who threaten the lives and well-being of insiders. During the two world wars, for instance, government-produced propaganda posters depicting evil “Huns” as a direct threat to Americans were ubiquitous and had the purpose of arousing anti-German sentiment while reinforcing American patriotism in support of the war effort.

Appeal to Simple Slogans and Images

Propaganda typically contains simple slogans and images intended to be memorable and to appeal to the emotion of the target audience. In May 2003, the Bush administration staged a dramatic television event involving the president arriving on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier via fighter jet. This was followed by a public declaration of the end of major combat operations by the president standing under a massive “Mission Accomplished” banner and to the applause of the sailors on the ship.

In simplifying complex foreign affairs, this device reinforces themes of patriotism and “us versus them.” Further, because slogans and images are overly simple relative to the complexities they represent, propaganda avoids meaningful nuance. The simple “Mission Accomplished” motif, for instance, left no room for the many challenges that lay ahead in Iraq since, by definition, the government’s goals had been achieved.

In general, propaganda seeks to present information as if it is simple, objective, clear cut, and static. As journalism scholar Jay Black notes, “while creative communication accepts pluralism and displays expectations that its receivers should conduct further investigations of its observations, allegations, and conclusions, propaganda does not appear to do so.” In doing so, propaganda attempts to limit contestability over information and ideas.

The Functions of Propaganda

Producers of propaganda employ the aforementioned techniques in varying combinations and ways to achieve three main purposes. First, propaganda is a means of transmitting and framing information from the government to citizens. “Wartime presidents and propagandists understand that at any given moment a range of competing frames or opinions about war are in fact possible.”39 Propaganda can attempt to persuade the recipient both within a given frame of acceptable activities and over the frame itself by shifting the range of what is considered appropriate activities by the recipient. As political scientist William Jacoby notes, “the ability to frame issues—that is, define the way that policy controversies will be presented to the public—is undoubtedly one of the most important ‘tools’ that political elites have at their disposal.”⁴⁰ This is certainly the case during war, where propaganda has historically played an important role in the U.S. government’s military efforts.⁴¹

Second, propaganda serves as a coordination device. In this role, propaganda generates common knowledge to coordinate citizens around the government’s objectives and goals. The key characteristic of common knowledge is that it is public—those who are exposed to information know that others are exposed to the same knowledge.⁴² This allows for the creation of a shared set of expectations because each person can be confident that others know the same information. Propaganda is a tool for government to generate common knowledge among the populace around its national security activities.

Democratic governments need the support of a sufficient portion of the populace in order to execute their foreign policy. This not only requires informing citizens of policies but also creating shared public expectations around what is necessary for the government to do in order to succeed. In the context of war, success often requires significant sacrifice on the part of citizens. One way of incentivizing citizens to incur these costs is to create expectations that their fellow citizens are also aware of and are committed to making the sacrifices necessary for success. If people believe that their neighbors are likely to behave in a certain manner for the “good of the country,” they are more likely to adopt similar behaviors to signal their patriotism. As political scientist Bruce Porter notes, “the exigencies of military conflict promote internal rallying: state and society unite in the common effort; economic and political cooperation increase; factionalism and partisanship are diminished; consonance reigns.”43 By creating common knowledge, propaganda serves the crucial function of facilitating this unification among the populace and, in the process, reducing opposition to the government’s military activities.

The final purpose of propaganda is to instill or reinforce collective fear in the domestic citizenry. Public fear involves “people’s felt apprehension of some harm to their collective well-being—the fear of terrorism, panic over crime, anxiety about moral decay—or the intimidation wielded over men and women by governments or groups.”⁴⁴ Citizens’ fear of some external threat and subsequent demands for government protection create space for state actors to expand the scale and scope of their power over the lives of citizens.⁴⁵ Indeed, economist Robert Higgs argues that the sustainability and growth of government require citizens to fear threats that require protection from the government. The result, he argues, is that governments “exploit it [fear], and they cultivate it. . . . They depend on fear to secure popular submission, compliance with official dictates, affirmative cooperation with the state’s enterprises and adventures.”⁴⁶

Of course, fear might be justified in cases of a legitimate threat. However, fear can also be exaggerated and manipulated by those in government who benefit from the increased dependency of the citizenry on the state. In their study of the sociology of knowledge, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann note that those in positions of power may seek to protect their monopoly privileges through “intimidation, rational and irrational propaganda (appealing to the outsiders’ interests and to their emotions), mystification, and, generally, the manipulation of prestige symbols.”47 This is especially relevant to the national security functions of the state, since a small group of elites possesses monopoly control over information and the tools of social control and violence.

General Douglas MacArthur recognized this possibility when he noted that “our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear, kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil—to gobble us up if we would not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exuberant funds demanded. Yet in retrospect, those disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”⁴⁸ More generally, the tendency of political actors will be to overstate threats because being biased in this direction is conducive to securing power and influence both within government and over the lives of citizens.

In building on people’s fears, propaganda facilitates unification with the government by rallying citizens around a common threat that is the source of distress. It also primes the citizenry to tolerate behaviors by their government that they would not otherwise tolerate—for example, economic controls, military conscription, internment, increased domestic surveillance, and violations of a range of personal liberties—in the name of “national security.” Propaganda does so by framing the costs of government actions as part of the broader sacrifice necessary for the effort being undertaken, an effort that is claimed to be necessary to protect individuals and prevent the erosion of social order.

Together, the three functions of propaganda aim to “sketch out a consistent system that is simple to grasp, one that both constructs and simultaneously provides an explanation for grievances against various out-groups.”⁴⁹ In creating common knowledge around a shared, pro-state agenda, propaganda aims to nudge recipients toward supporting and accepting their government’s national security policies, including expansions in the influence and power of the state over the citizenry. This is especially likely to be the case during instances where citizens perceive a crisis situation that demands a government solution.⁵⁰

The Limits of Propaganda’s Influence

Our argument is not that governments can deploy propaganda to manipulate and control citizens to do whatever those in power desire.51 While political officials produce propaganda because they believe that it will persuade citizens, this belief, by itself, does not guarantee success. As Brian Anse Patrick, a communications scholar, and A. Trevor Thrall, a political scientist, emphasize, “propaganda must align with common beliefs for it to be effective; the propagandist becomes incredible when he swims upstream of popular culture norms and agendas; and this is why modern propaganda relies so heavily on polls and focus groups for guidance.”⁵² In line with this insight, our theory is recipient driven. Propagandists must act to either persuade recipients within the acceptable range of actions or persuade them to shift their frame of what they deem acceptable. In either case, the recipient’s frame serves as a constraint on the influence of propaganda.⁵³

Our position is that governments ultimately derive their power from the consent of the populace.⁵⁴ Citizens are not the passive pawns of government unless they choose to be. Instead, people possess significant agency, including the power to ignore or reject the messages being propagated. This power grants people the ability to curtail efforts by government agents to expand their domestic influence and power through the dissemination of propaganda. From this perspective, government propaganda is best understood as one of many influences on how people perceive both the specifics activities of their government and the appropriate overarching role of the state both in the broader world and in their own individual lives.⁵⁵ Within a given frame, or by convincing people to shift their frame, the propagandist can attempt to manufacture desired outcomes through the presentation of information in a certain manner. The magnitude and extent of this influence, however, ultimately rests with the members of the populace as recipients of government propaganda.

WHY PROPAGANDA MATTERS

Propaganda is important because it influences the behavior of the populace and the political elite that, in turn, affects a range of outcomes related to human well-being. This is especially important in matters of war because of the high costs that include devastating consequences for ordinary civilians. A study of the role of propaganda disseminated by radio in the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi ethnic minority found that “broadcasts had a significant effect on participation in killings by both militia groups and ordinary civilians.”56 These effects were direct in terms of their influence on people’s behaviors but also indirect in terms of those violent behaviors spilling over to other villages who observed the actions of their neighbors.

Discussing the role of deception by the American government in matters of war, journalist Jon Basil Utley recently noted that “Official Washington and those associated with it have misrepresented the facts numerous times in the service of military actions that might not otherwise have taken place. In the Middle East, these interventions have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians, brought chaos to Iraq and Libya, and led to the expulsion of a million Christians from communities where they have lived since biblical times.”⁵⁷ As this indicates, effective propaganda can influence citizens to support misguided state violence with significant global costs for human welfare.

Understanding the nuances of propaganda also matters for those who value democracy and individual freedom. Government propaganda is often associated with totalitarian regimes, and while these regimes do disseminate propaganda, so, too, do democratic governments, despite their rhetorical commitment to transparency, accountability, and other liberal values. Appreciating the frequent use of propaganda by democratic governments raises crucial issues.

For one, state-produced propaganda highlights a potential flaw within democratic political institutions. As we document in the next chapter, the possibility for government propaganda emerges because of pathologies inherent in democratic politics. Appreciating the imperfections in political institutions is important for thinking about the scope and scale of powers granted to democratic governments. This is especially important in matters of national security, since significant power and secrecy is granted to government in the name of protecting citizens. Democratic pathologies, however, create the possibility that this power and secrecy will be used in a manner that does not comport with their intended purpose.

Further, while the creation and dissemination of state-produced propaganda are the result of democratic pathologies, the use of propaganda can also contribute to the intensification of these dysfunctions. Propaganda contributes to recipients receiving biased or overtly incorrect information that amplifies existing asymmetries between citizens and those in government who control information flows.

The cumulative result is that government-produced propaganda threatens the liberal aspects of democratic systems. As Jason Stanley argues, “the most basic problem for democracy raided by propaganda is the possibility that the vocabulary of liberal democracy is used to mask an undemocratic reality.”58 He goes on to note that when this happens, “the appearance of a liberal democracy would be merely the trappings of an illiberal, undemocratic reality.”⁵⁹ From this perspective, one of the main threats from propaganda is that it facilitates government activities that undermine individual liberty and collective, yet voluntary, participation and deliberation—hallmarks of a self-governing liberal democracy.⁶⁰

The use of propaganda changes the nature of the relationship between citizens and the state. Instead of viewing citizens as the driving force behind the actions of the state, the use of propaganda is grounded in the idea that citizens stand in opposition to the goals of political rulers. Propaganda aims to neuter this opposition by manipulating the views and opinions of citizens to comport with those of the elite. The relationship between citizens and the state shifts from one where the citizenry is viewed as the primary driver of political actions to one where a small number of state actors become the central source of control.

Propaganda further undermines liberalism by normalizing deception, which can spill over into other areas of political life. As John Mearsheimer writes, “once a country’s leaders conclude that its citizens do not understand important foreign policy issues and thus need to be manipulated, it is not much of a leap to apply the same sort of thinking to national issues.”⁶¹ As we will discuss in the next chapter, one of the common justifications for the use of propaganda is the need for “noble deception.” This view holds that benevolent political leaders can and should deceive the citizenry for their own good. One of the main problems with this justification for deception is that it views the citizenry as incapable of determining what is in their best interest. Moreover, once one adopts this position, it can be used to justify deception to accomplish a wide range of domestic and international policies. As state deception and power bleeds into more areas of life, individual liberty and democratic norms are quickly lost.

A final concern is that propaganda associated with national security and foreign affairs fosters a domestic culture of militarism. Colonel James Donovan noted that militarism “is defined as the tendency to regard military efficiency as the supreme ideal of the state, and it subordinates all other interests to those of the military.”62 Militarism creates an environment in which people “rank military institutions and ways above the ways of civilian life, carrying military mentality and modes of acting and decision into the civilian sphere.”⁶³ Militarism threatens liberty and freedom as these values become subservient to the state and its national security goals and objectives in the name of protecting those very values.⁶⁴

Senator William Fulbright warned that the “militarism that has crept up on us [the United States] is bringing about profound changes in the character of our society and government—changes that are slowly undermining democratic procedure and values.”⁶⁵ Along similar lines, historian Andrew Bacevich observes that “today as never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military power.”⁶⁶ He warns that the consequence of this militarism will be that “we will rob future generations of their rightful inheritance. We will wreak havoc abroad. We will endanger our security at home. We will risk the forfeiture of all that we prize.”⁶⁷

As these writers emphasize, militarism poses a unique threat to the foundations of a free society. While government-provided security is often viewed as being crucial for the maintenance of a free society, enabling government to provide security also empowers the state to subsume freedom in the name of safety. Militarism expedites this loss of freedom as the security functions of the government come to dominate society and subsume the very liberties the state purports to protect.⁶⁸

Propaganda facilitates a culture of militarism by exaggerating the actual risks from external threats and framing the state as being the ultimate source of order and protection. This contributes to a culture emphasizing the primacy of the national security state as being necessary for the survival of domestic economic, political, and social institutions. In this role propaganda diverts the attention of citizens away from the fundamental and perpetual contest between domestic government power and liberty by focusing on external threats and the necessity of government to protect “the people.” As George Orwell warned, political language, of which propaganda is one manifestation, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”69 In this role, propaganda seeks to condition citizens to ignore the domestic threats from state power and instead accept increases in the government’s scale and scope for their own good. These sacrifices are depicted as being necessary and temporary. However, expansions in state power rarely return to earlier levels and create a host of institutional possibilities for abuses in future periods.⁷⁰ A society defined by militarism is no longer a free society.

In the chapters that follow, we consider how propaganda can provide misleading information about specific current events while also contributing to a broader culture of militarism. Given the potential for propaganda to undermine liberal political institutions and to foster militarism, studying and appreciating its nuances is of central importance for the maintenance of a free society.

OUR CONTRIBUTION

Propaganda has been studied from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including communications, economics, history, journalism, psychology, political science, and sociology.⁷¹ These studies, which are both theoretical and applied in nature, explore propaganda in a number of contexts, settings, and time periods. We contribute to this literature by applying insights from political economy to understand the role that propaganda plays in democratic societies.

Political economy applies economics to nonmarket decision making, including politics.⁷² Central to this approach is an appreciation of how different rules and organizational forms influence economic, legal, political, and social outcomes by producing varying incentives for those operating within these structures.⁷³ Our analysis focuses on the incentives created by democratic political institutions and how they influence policy as it pertains to national security.⁷⁴

One of the many insights of political economy scholarship is that democratic governments often fail relative to a first-best scenario where various political actors—for example, elected officials and bureaucrats—represent the interests of “the people.”75 In contrast to the romantic view of democratic politics—where benevolent politicians seek to maximize some notion of the “public interest”—scholarship in political economy highlights that political institutions, just like private institutions, are populated by goal-driven individuals who respond to incentives. Further, the incentives created by political institutions often generate an array of frictions and imperfections that create room for political opportunism.

To date, the insights of political economy have been largely neglected in studies of government propaganda.⁷⁶ Likewise, scholars specializing in political economy have not studied the role that propaganda plays in democratic politics. Our analysis fills this gap. We explain how democratic institutions create space for the dissemination of propaganda and how this contributes to an environment conducive to political opportunism by those in power. In doing so, political propagandists produce two effects. First, propaganda creates bias around specific current policies. Second, propaganda erodes the liberal features of democratic political institutions by undermining the primacy of the citizenry living within those institutions. It does so by shifting emphasis from deriving genuine consent from citizens to the political elite manipulating citizens to achieve their desired ends.

We also contribute to the scholarship on “threat inflation,” which refers to the overstatement of potential dangers to the well-being of the domestic populace.⁷⁷ Our analysis advances the “domestic political explanation” for threat inflation.⁷⁸ This explanation appreciates two realities. First, a variety of political actors—elected officials, bureaucrats, and members of special-interest groups—face incentives to overstate threats to the domestic populace in order to advance their interests. Second, the frictions inherent in domestic politics combined with the secrecy of the national security state intensify these incentives. Given these realities, members of the national security state will often misrepresent facts regarding threats in order to convince the populace that the political elite must “do something” to address the supposed problem. We explain how the production and distribution of propaganda are central to the process of threat inflation and provide solutions for weakening the incentive for political actors in democratic politics to mispresent facts in order to engage in narrow opportunism.

A final contribution is to catalog and analyze instances of U.S. government propaganda following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. These cases illustrate how present-day propaganda operates in America. They are important for both understanding the operations of the U.S. government following the post-9/11 attacks and, more broadly, for better understanding the role of government propaganda in democratic politics and its deleterious effects on freedom, especially as it relates to the spread and entrenchment of militarism in American society.

A ROADMAP

The remainder of this book proceeds as follows. Chapter 2 provides an economic model of government propaganda. We begin with an ideal scenario where the interests of citizens and political actors are aligned. In this hypothetical world, there is no room for propaganda. The purpose of this ideal model to make clear how democratic institutions operate under first-best conditions. We then draw on the insights from political economy to explain why democratic governments deviate from this ideal model. The existence of information asymmetries in democratic institutions creates openings for propaganda. These openings are especially prevalent in the national security state because information asymmetries are intensified due to the secret nature of security and foreign affairs, which includes monopoly control over information by a small group of political elites.

The subsequent chapters analyze cases of government propaganda in the post-9/11 period. Their purpose is to illuminate the many ways that war-related propaganda permeates American life. The case-study method is appropriate for our topic of study given that “direct, ‘smoking gun’ evidence of deception is usually lacking.”⁷⁹ This necessitates the study of indirect evidence focused on the gap between underlying realities and the public presentation of information.⁸⁰ Moreover, the precise form that propaganda takes varies greatly from case to case. Given this, delving into the details of specific cases is the most effective means of uncovering the realities and effects of propaganda. In each case we contrast the underlying realities of the specific situation with the (mis)information presented by U.S. government officials to identify gaps between the two and discuss the consequences.

The first two case studies consider the role of propaganda in the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq. Chapter 3 focuses on the creation and dissemination of propaganda in the post-9/11 period by analyzing the lead up to the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. government in March 2003. We discuss the disconnect between what was known by U.S. officials in the months preceding the invasion and the information that was presented to the American public.

Continuing with Iraq, chapter 4 describes how U.S. government agencies and officials misled the public regarding the war in Iraq. We trace the intensive public relations campaign launched by the Bush administration following the invasion of Iraq. This includes deliberate efforts by officials to shape the narrative surrounding the war by working to control the flow of information to news agencies, crafting talking points for new agencies reporting on the war, and providing supposedly independent “experts” to appear on television.

Chapter 5 explores the use of propaganda in American sports. We discuss how the U.S. government has utilized sports to normalize militarism for both enlisted personnel and civilians, rally support for U.S. military operations, and foster military unification. We then analyze “paid patriotism” following the 9/11 attacks, in which a variety of professional sports franchises accepted funds from the Department of Defense to engage in patriotic displays to garner support for the war in Iraq as well as the broader war on terror. Finally, we discuss the misleading and false information provided to the public surrounding the death of Pat Tillman, a former professional football player and army ranger, who was killed by fratricide while on deployment.

Chapter 6 examines the creation and operation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). We analyze how U.S. government officials consistently inflate the overall threat of terrorism as well as the threat of terrorism in aviation. We also consider several specific terror plots in the post-9/11 period, contrasting the known facts in each case with the official portrayals of each event.

The final case study (chapter 7) analyzes domestic war propaganda in the context of film. We discuss how mass entertainment is often significantly influenced and altered by U.S. government officials to shape the attitudes and opinions of the public regarding U.S. foreign policy. We examine the relationship between Hollywood film studios and the DOD and discuss how film studios cede editorial control to these agencies in exchange for the use of agency knowledge, personnel, and equipment.

Chapter 8 concludes with the implications of our analysis. We critically consider four potential solutions to overcoming the information asymmetries that allow those in government to use propaganda. These include self-policing by those in power, whistleblowing, the media, and citizen inoculation against propaganda. We consider the strengths and weaknesses of each alternative as well as the conditions under which each is likely to be effective in checking the deleterious effects of state-produced propaganda.