Word Tricks & Propaganda By Edward S. Herman

Word Tricks & Propaganda

By Edward S. Herman

The mainstream media carry out their propaganda service on behalf of the corporate and political establishment in many ways: by choice of topics addressed (government rather than corporate abuses, welfare rather than Pentagon waste, Kadaffi rather than Guatemalan state terrorism), by their framing of issues (GDP growth rather than distribution, Fed policy effects on inflation and security prices rather than on unemployment), by their choice of sources of information (heavily depending on officials and think tank flacks), and by their use of language, among other practices.

I want to focus here on the tricks of language that serve propaganda ends, although it should be recognized that biased word usage is closely tied to the other modes of bias. Heavy reliance on officials allows the officials to frame the issues and to use words in ways that serve their agenda. The word "terrorist" is applied to the target enemy (Iran), or the enemy of our friend (Hamas, the PLO, the Kurdish PKK), not the "constructively engaged" governments of Colombia, Israel, Turkey or, back in the 1980s, Savimbi and the apartheid government of South Africa. The examples below will show how story framing and word usage are essentially two aspects of a single process.

The integration of word usage, framing, and source selection points up the fact that language is an arena of conflict and struggle. Word meanings, connotations, and applications are fluid and change in the course of struggle. For example, labor has long fought to have the word "strike" mean a legitimate labor tactic and part of the institution of collective bargaining, whereas management has always tried to get the word to symbolize labor violence, inconvenience to the community, and damage to the GDP and balance of payments. Management has been pretty successful in getting the word interpreted with negative connotations. Similarly, "welfare" has taken on negative connotations as part of the 25 year long corporate and rightwing attack on the welfare state. This same campaign has seen the word "government" become a word of derogation. Politicians run against "Washington" and "government." At the same time, interestingly, as the right wingers like killing (except fetuses) and are fond of the military establishment, they have succeeded in making the word government applicable only to the government in its civil functions; in denouncing the "government," we are not denouncing the Pentagon.

Words are regularly transformed in the service of the powerful. "Terrorism," originally used to describe state violence, as in the French Revolutionary "reign of terror," has evolved in modern times to focus mainly on anti-government, anti-establishment forms of political violence. "Political correctness," originally an ironical left term for the standards of comrades prone to sectarianism, was seized by establishment spokespersons for a broad-brush castigation of the academic left. "Freedom" has been subtly transformed in the New World Order from political to economic liberty (including liberty for GE, GM, Exxon, and Royal Dutch Shell), just as "democracy" has lost its substantive qualities in favor of adherence to electoral forms. "Entitlement" has taken on negative connotations as the dominant class has succeeded in identifying it with claims of the weak, as in "Social Security entitlements" (there are no military-industrial complex "entitlements," only "procurement," service contracts, and occasionally acknowledged "subsidies").

"Reform" is the classic of word revisionism in the service of power, transformed from meaning institutional and policy changes helpful to the afflicted and weak to moves away from the welfare state and toward free markets, thus helping the afflictors and strong. In an Orwellian twist, "reform" that frees the poor and weak of their "entitlements"—pushing them into a labor market kept loose by Alan Greenspan—is referred to as "empowerment."

 

Let us review some of the common word tricks of the servants of power in the media and think tank-academic community, taking examples from recent press usage.

PURRING. Purr words are those with positive and warming overtones that create an aura of decency and virtue. Reform, responsible, accountability, choice, jobs, growth, modernization, flexibility, cost-benefit analysis, national security, stability and efficiency are all prime purr words. The "reformers" are always having their "patience tested," while never testing the patience of others ("Labour costs test patience at US Airways," Financial Times [FT], April 14, 1997). And they are invariably moderate, centrist, courageous, daring, and proud. The New York Times’ (NYT) Leslie Gelb spoke of Aspin, Solarz, and Al Gore as "courageous" for having broken ranks and supported George Bush’s decision to bomb Iraq rather than pursue any less violent course of action (March 10, 1991). A NYT headline of April 11, 1997 reads "Proud but Cornered, Mobutu Can Only Hope." Mobutu is one of the great thieves and scoundrels of modern times, but having been installed by the CIA and protected by the West until 1997, even now he is accorded the purr word "proud," which the paper would never apply to Kim Il Sung or Saddam Hussein.

We can put up a large list of purr words from names of congressional bills, always designed to express positive values, even if in substance they threaten enormous pain: New Jersey’s "Family Development Initiative Act" (stripping benefits from the poor); the "National Security Revitalization Act" (more boondoggle money); the August 1996 "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" (which includes five purr words in a single Orwellian classic of doublespeak). Republican pollster and deception manager Frank Luntz carefully tested the "resonance" of words in advising Gingrich and company on the language to be used in the Contract With [sic] America. He was quite open that you include purr words even if it misrepresents intent, yielding the deception masterpiece "Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act," for a proposal whose core content was sizable cuts in capital gains taxes.

The use of "flexibility" in "Democrats Show Flexibility On Capital Gains Tax Cut" (NYT, Feb. 23, 1997), illustrates how word usage and framing are integrated—"flexibility" gives a positive resonance and tacit approval within a frame stressing political compromise. The paper could have used words like "cave in" or "weakening" and framed the issue as one of Democratic acceptance of a further regression in the tax structure.

For the New York Times, spokespersons for the military-industrial complex like Sam Nunn, the late Henry Jackson (Senator from Boeing), and the recently retired Republican Senator Alan Simpson are "moderates" and automatically get words expressing approval—an article by Claudia Dreifus on Simpson is titled "Exit Reasonable Right" (June 2, 1996), and in an interview she allows Simpson uncontested justifications for his "rough" usage of Anita Hill and assailing Peter Arnett’s Gulf War reporting as traitorous. A column on Jeane Kirkpatrick, by Barbara Crossette was titled "A Warrior, A Mother, A Scholar, A Mystery" (NYT, Aug. 17, 1994). Kirkpatrick was most memorable as a "scholar" for her view that "totalitarian" regimes like those in the Soviet bloc can never open up; and as a humanist she was perhaps best known for alleging that the four American nuns raped and murdered in El Salvador in 1980 had asked for it. 

For the Times, the Arab world is "split into a clearly moderate, pro-Western camp led by Egypt..and a fiercely nationalistic anti-Western coalition gathered around Iran..."(Aug. 12, 1990). Moderate and pro-Western are synonymous and sources of "stability," as in "In Uneasy Time, Saudi Prince Provides a Hope of Stability" (Jan. 19, 1996). Pro-Western moderates like Saudi Princes, or Suharto, are never "dictators" or "tyrants" like Fidel Castro, and if they are not explicitly tagged moderates, approval is expressed by references to their economic accomplishments in "growth"—as regards Suharto, for example, "even his critics [specifics unmentioned] acknowledge that he has brought growth and prosperity to this country of 190 million people" (NYT, July 28, 1996).

A moderate program is one approved by the western establishment, whatever its impact on the underlying population, as in "Jose Maria Aznar was appointed prime minister [of Spain] on a moderate platform, promising strict austerity to put the economic house in order" (Philadelphia Inquirer, April 5, 1996). As noted earlier, those implementing approved programs are accorded other purr words—they are bold, courageous, slay ogres, and they do things "quietly" (Thomas Friedman, NYT, "Mexico’s quiet revolution," Dec. 17, 1995), never noisily and recklessly. These purr words often not only express approval but mislead as to substance. Thus, James Sterngold says that "Nafta is all about corporate efficiency" (NYT, Oct. 9, 1995), which is completely untrue—it is about corporate bargaining power, corporate rights to invest abroad, etc. If "moderates" carrying out neoliberal programs do this in violation of election promises, this is itself courageous and meritorious for the dominant Western media. Politicians must "stay the course" and avoid "pandering to fears" (translation: do what the electorate wants; NYT, ed., entitled "Why Poland Can’t Flinch," Oct. 26, 1991), which displays the triumph of media class bias over the nominal commitment to democratic processes. 

 

SNARLING. Snarl words are those that induce negative reactions and feelings of anger and rejection, like extremist, terrorist, dictator, dependency, welfare, reckless, outlaw, and snarling itself. Moderates never snarl, nor can they be outlaws, terrorists, dictators or reckless. Established institutions like the Pentagon and large corporations don’t suffer from "dependency" or receive "welfare payments." There is "waste" in social budgets, so assassins of the welfare state pretend that that is what they seek to contain in budget cuts (along with "dependency" and immorality). They can count on the mainstream media not making comparisons of waste in social and military budgets.