From The Guardian, 7/12/03:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...995669,00.html

Trading on fear

From the start, the invasion of Iraq was seen in the US as a marketing
project.

Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it
worked.

Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry,
politicians keen to roll back civil liberties - all seized the moment
to capitalise on the war.

PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber explain how it worked.

Saturday July 12, 2003
The Guardian


"The United States lost the public relations war in the Muslim world a
long time ago," Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News,
said in October 2001.

"They could have the prophet Mohammed doing public relations and it
wouldn't help."

At home in the US, the propaganda war has been more effective.

And a key component has been fear: fear of terrorism and fear of
attack.

Early scholars who studied propaganda called it a "hypodermic needle
approach" to communication, in which the communicator's objective was
to "inject" his ideas into the minds of the target population.

Since propaganda is often aimed at persuading people to do things that
are not in their own best interests, it frequently seeks to bypass the
rational brain altogether and manipulate us on a more primitive level,
appealing to emotional symbolism.

Television uses sudden, loud noises to provoke a startled response,
bright colours, violence - not because these things are inherently
appealing, but because they catch our attention and keep us watching.

When these practices are criticised, advertisers and TV executives
respond that they do this because this is what their "audience wants".

In fact, however, they are appealing selectively to certain aspects of
human nature - the most primitive aspects, because those are the most
predictable.

Fear is one of the most primitive emotions in the human psyche, and it
definitely keeps us watching.

If the mere ability to keep people watching were really synonymous
with "giving audiences what they want", we would have to conclude that
people "want" terrorism.

On September 11, Osama bin Laden kept the entire world watching.

As much as people hated what they were seeing, the power of their
emotions kept them from turning away.

And fear can make people do other things they would not do if they
were thinking rationally.

During the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, psychologist Gustave
Gilbert visited Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering in his prison
cell.

"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary
to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very
thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction," Gilbert
wrote in his journal, Nuremberg Diary.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged.

"Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war
when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in
one piece? ... That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders
of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a
fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship ...
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

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Harry