The power of persuasion: a look into the world of propaganda
Chris Boffey, former news editor of the Observer, Sunday Telegraph and the Mirror, and one-time special adviser to the Labour government, explores the meaning of propaganda.
It might be insidious, it could be downright wrong, but propaganda works and has done since states began to understand that power and control did not just have to rely on brute force.
From imperial Rome to Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia to Mao’s China and the USA, the most powerful in society have always used, and continue to use, the power of persuasion as an essential part of their armouries.This is well documented in the current British Library exhibition, ‘Propaganda: Power and Persuasion’, but the curators take a controversial view, not shared by all, that all government messages,whether they be on the benefits of drinking milk or the dangers of HIV, come under the same propaganda umbrella as war, genocide and hatred.
In publicity material the library says: “From the eye-opening to the mind-boggling, from the beautifu lto the surprising, posters, films, cartoons, sounds and texts reveal the myriad ways that states try to influence and persuade their citizens.”
‘Freedom American Style’, B. Prorokov, 1971
Up front and centre in this argument is the figure of Alistair Campbell, the former government spin doctor, who, depending on your point of view, is either one of the most admired or reviled communication specialists of the last two decades. In a recent speech to a public relations industry convention, Campbell praised the exhibition, showed in his presentation some of the most eye-catching posters and asserted: “There has always been communications. There has always been public affairs.There has always been PR. There has always been spin. Read the Bible, for heaven’s sake.”
The exhibition, which has two video interviews with Campbell himself, embraces this philosophy from the very start, citing the first use of propagandaas being employed by the King of Thrace in 290BC , when he used coins to link him to his predecessor Alexander the Great.
Iraq War playing cards, developed by the US military to help troops identify the most wanted members of Saddam Hussein’s government. Loan courtesy of David Welch
It took that other great powerful beast, the Roman Catholic Church, to come up with a word for it.
Propaganda, from the Latin propogare, to spread, originally referred to its missionary work. The word was first used in English to refer to Pope Gregory’s committee of cardinals, which was called ‘The Congregation of the Propaganda’.
But the political sense had completely replaced the religious by the 19th century, when a dictionary defined the word as “as a term of reproach to secret associations for the spread of opinions and principles which are viewed by most governments with horror and aversion”.
'Liberty Calling’, a WWI poster encouraging Americans to invest in government war bonds, which reads ‘Hello! This is Liberty speaking. Billions of dollars are needed and needed now’
This is a view shared today by the doyen of political reporters, John Sergeant, who reported Westminster and Whitehall for the BBC and ITN. He was most famous for his reporting of Margaret Thatcher’s demise, before endearing himself to the nation as a hapless participant on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’.
Sergeant, a former political editor of ITN, is affronted by the exhibition and refused overtures by British Library to be interviewed for it. He rejects the views of Ian Cooke, the curator, who says: “When we were planning the exhibition we took an ethically neutral approach and defined propaganda as really any form of communication designed to influence, persuade or reinforce opinion.”
Franklin Roosevelt’s message to young people, illustrated with Hitler mask and skull
Sergeant condones the exhibition’s approach, saying: “It is all very well to say the exhibition is ethically neutral but propaganda is evil, completely cynical. If you are Doctor Goebbels, you are not worrying about the truth of the Jews, you think ‘how can we hit them, and how can we repeat the lie?’
“The essence of propaganda, as George Orwell points out, is that if you repeat the lie enough people will believe it. That is propaganda. Government information of how bad AIDs is going to be is of a wholly different sort.”
He says the exhibition completely fails to show that reporters like him, who have spent their whole lives in the area of government information, have not set out to lie to the British public. And in a nod to Campbell and Tony Blair, he draws a distinction between governments saying what they believe and outright lying.
“The best spin doctors very seldom lie. What went wrong with spin doctoring in Iraq was that there were no weapons of mass destruction. But they thought there were – the idea that they knew they were never there is not what happened.”
Tufty club safety sheet, 1964, (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents)
What is undeniable is that propaganda, whatever your view, has spawned some of the most recognisable imagery in the form of posters and films.
The exhibition shows the evil incarnation of the Jews as devised by the Nazis alongside beautiful pastoral paintings of the British seaside exhorting holidaymakers to take the train and a French poster showing the evils of alcohol.
There are glorious Norman Rockwell posters used by the US government to implore the public to buy Second World War bonds alongside China’s White Haired girl from 1950, which purported to show how Communism liberated peasant women.
Coughs and sneezes, He’s a public enemy, 1960
But the exhibition is not just looking backwards. It discusses the use of social media, the tweet that went round the world after Obama’s re-election (‘four more years’) and that getting something to go viral is the now the most persuasive form of spin.
But some things remain the same, and every week planted questions are asked by tame MPs at prime minister’s question time so that the latest government “triumph” can be brayed out.
However, and I declare an interest as a former special adviser to the Labour government, it can go wrong. In 2002 we thought it a brilliant idea to get the question asked of Blair: “Can you confirm that the standard of English and grammar in schools is now at the highest level since records began?” The answer being: “The honourable member is certainly right …waffle…waffle.”
But Blair was called away at the last moment and PMQs was to be taken by John Prescott, the deputy prime minister. Cue panic. The question was never asked.