Based on Wag the Dog and The Lot by Dr Jennifer Minter
“Check your bags; if you see an unaccompanied bag lying around please report this to security”. This voice over was repeated at 10 minute intervals during the Woodford Music Wave Carnival punctuating the popular lyrics of Jay Park and Dr Mr Mojo, singing about, of all things, brotherhood.
Such reminders to be afraid are ubiquitous these days. You only need to catch a train from Southern Cross station and you’ll be greeted by dozens of posters and banners, plastered from floor to ceiling reminding us, “if you see something, say something”. At the same time, Daniel Bowen of the Public Transport Users association says it’s important not to feel a sense of panic, precisely because they are designed to alarm.
So who controls our reality?
“You don’t choose your family”, says Mourad Laachraoui, the brother of one of two suicide bombers who attacked the Brussels airport in March 2016. His reality has indeed been darkened by the actions of his brother which he hopes will not cast a shadow over his promising athletic career. Ironically, he has been chosen to represent Belgium at the Rio Olympics in the Taekwondo competition. (He won gold at the European Taekwondo Championships in Montreux, Switzerland in May 2016.)
After the murder of 17-year-old school girl, Masa Vukotic, in Doncaster (March, 2015) the chief Detective Inspector Mick Hughes told ABC Radio National that parks are not safe for females. “I suggest to people, particularly females, they shouldn’t be alone in parks”.
Fear seeps into our subconscious shaping our collective realities in insidious ways.
Watching who? Watching what?
We are constantly reminded that there are people who would do us harm. There’s also chatter about the need to ban women wearing the niqab, especially in Parliament places. Should we be watching them? Would they do us harm?
“All terrorism is theatre and all counter-terrorism is theatre” (Dr Anne Azza Aly, research fellow at Curtin University) These days, watching the presidential campaign in the United States, one also realises that it is not just the world of terrorism that gives rise to theatrics. It is not just terrorists who appreciate the power of the image.
In fact, the Donald Trump show, is all about the package and the show and very little about content. In fact, some political commentators suggest that it is quite common for Mr Trump to contradict himself at least three times a day.
According to the Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, Mr Trump can effortlessly leverage off his celebrity status and the 15 seasons of his reality TV show, The Apprentice, so that in the end it becomes difficult to distinguish between the real and the made-up President, between news and reality TV.
“If you see Trump in The Apprentice, he’s in the high-backed chair. He’s perfectly lit. he’s perfectly made up. He’s perfectly coiffed. He’s perfectly dressed. And he’s decisive. He’s tough. He’s making decisions. He looks and acts like what you think a president should be.” (The Age, 30/4/16)
The ability of governments, law and order officials, and the media to manipulate our emotions and promote fear at a subconscious level is a useful tactic – especially if they want our support for an issue or scheme.
In the case of Masa Vukotic, the perpetuation of these “bogeyman fears”, says Dr Lauren Rosewarne, Melbourne University academic, is a subtle attempt to shift the debate onto women and away from men’s murderous intentions.
“This is yet another example on what women need to do to avoid being victims of crime as opposed to what men can do not to commit them”. “We are always given information about what we need to do as women to stay safe. I’d like to see the debate shifted. “We’ve grown up believing the world is dangerous for women”.
The Great Fear
Whilst we are reminded of “evil” people wishing us harm, we see images of grey ominous fighter aircraft being prepared for overseas deployments. We see federal police appearing at carefully orchestrated press conferences explaining how they have successfully prevented us from being murdered in our beds.
As Leunig said when we went to war in 2003, and which is equally applicable today, “to prosecute an avoidable war, a government requires in its citizens a critical mass of fear and hatred against the proposed enemy, and in the media there were many who were suddenly willing to work quite ravenously at fostering this emotional climate”.
The ability of governments and the media to control and manipulate our emotions at a subliminal level is indeed a masterstroke.
It channels our emotions towards a convenient enemy (forget the Catholic priest paedophiles; forget the perpetrators of domestic violence; forget the insidious drug dealers.) As the government systematically seeks to erode citizens’ rights (1984 Big Brother) because of the threat of IS terrorists, we should also consider that the number of deaths from terror-related attacks is far less than that from domestic violence, from car accidents and from industrial accidents.
Michael Leunig’s cartoon published in The Age on Anzac Day (25th April 2013), points to the manner in which the governments and numerous public relations departments shape our views, values and outlook on life. How many Australians is too many? he asks. Typically, cynically, he suggests, “We shall find out on ANZAC day when what it means to be an AUSTRALIAN is drummed into us”.
Accordingly, these notable gatekeepers of our political, social and cultural institutions including the media, political pollsters, public relations spin doctors and marketing gurus shape our views, values, thoughts and feelings. Sometimes they work in benign and productive ways, other times in insidious and coercive ways. Sometimes the influence is subtle; sometimes it is heavy-handed.
In Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley outlines the role of skilled mind-manipulators who, trained in the science and art of suggestibility, are able to exploit and control the thoughts, feelings and responses of both individuals and the crowd. “The science-dictator appeals neither to reason, nor to self interest, but to passion and prejudice – hidden forces in the unconscious depths of every human mind.”
Specifically in Brave New World, the technique of sleep conditioning, subtly implants moral suggestions in the child’s mind, until the “child’s mind is these suggestions and the sum of these suggestions is the child’s mind … But all these suggestions are our suggestions (i.e. those of the state.)
Thus the dictatorship is able to control the child’s automatic reflexes, and hence their moral choices, attitudes, desires and outlook on life. (In this case, the children are programmed subconsciously to associate the roses with horror.)
All the more insidious because the conditioning appears so benign and intuitive.
One victim of the “stolen generation” who was ignorant of his cultural origins says: “I didn’t mix with Aboriginal people at all. I had – and I’ve admitted this in public before, that I was racist towards Indigenous people. I learnt my prejudices from newspapers, from the television, from the radio. and while my adoptive parents didn’t go around criticising, you know, Aboriginal people in front of me, there was certainly no positive comments about Aboriginal people.” (Bringing Them Home, p. 237.)
Evidently, the media plays a critical role in shaping our realities, as does advertising and marketing specialists who similarly employ motivation analysts to study human weaknesses. They use their analysis to control influence and our realities, exploit our ignorance and fears for monetary gain. Just think about the world-wide storm of desire each time new tech gadgets such as iPads and iPhones are released.
In “Thou shalt be attractive”, (The Lot) Leunig metaphorically depicts the slick advertising and media apparatus as an omnipotent “dictator” who commands us to be “charming, strong, good-looking, successful, groovy, brilliant, amusing or rich”. We are told how to look, how to feel and how to act. We are even told what to dream in the “name of aspirational self-improvement”. We learn that charm is everything even at the expense of our ‘real” selves. As a result we live in constant “fear of being unattractive”. We become so conditioned by these ideals that we associate a masking of the self with acceptability and happiness and cultivate “two faces” thinking that we are real when in fact we are being deceptive. If we are sufficiently false, we will be rewarded: we will be “powerful, stylish, clever and charismatic”.
One consequence of the dictatorial power of such marketing gurus is our growing obsession with beauty and cosmetic surgery. The size of this industry increased from $26 million to $37 million from 2002 to 2010. Why? Because people are going under the knife in the name of beauty. Youngsters are at risk, and so are many Asians who are believe they need the double eye tuck in order to appear more European-centric.
In 2013, Lisa Wilkinson delivered the Andrew Ollie Media lecture and encouraged women to take a stand against the media. Like Leunig, she criticized the way girls were being conditioned by the media. She states that “the Instagram culture has become the screwed-up arbiter of a girl’s self-esteem”. Further, that “many young girls are growing up while being held hostage via social media to the views others have of them, long before they even know who they are themselves.”
Recently, students are lamenting the fact that they are being typecast as “irresponsible radicals” by media representations. As Ms Dalton explains, “the majority of students are willing to engage in an informed discussion about the changes, but are instead ignored by government and drowned out in the media by a minority of violent protesters, and those with extreme views towards deregulation … to typecast students as irresponsible radicals is unhelpful and inaccurate.” (Hana Dalton, The Age, 23/5/14)
Similarly, the American and Australian Dreams are, in the words of Leunig, perhaps another facet of “aspirational self improvement” –myths in the making.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman depicts a salesman in a similar aspirational social context, who believes that materialistic gain, popularity and attractiveness are a prerequisite to happiness and success.
Obsessed by the values and expectations relating to the American Dream, Willy Loman, the main protagonist, believes that wealth, status and material success will make him popular and “well liked”.
Willy’s brother, Ben, is also promoted as an epitome of the dream. He made it “big” in Alaska. He is the ideal “self-made man” who has profited from the diamond mines. He “knew the answers”. Ben provides the benchmark or a frame of reference from which Willy seeks to evaluate his own success or lack thereof.
Likewise, Ben’s success is juxtaposed with Dave Singleton’s, who, at 84, is testimony to the incredible power and popularity of the salesman. Willy exclaims “when I look at that man, I say what is there to worry about” (67).
Willy lives his life on higher purchase always following an ideal that is not of his own making. He exaggerates his reputation, status and popularity. He boasts to Biff that he is greeted by mayors in the major cities such as Providence and that he is well known, “they know me up and down New England” (24). As a measure of his status and reputation, he can park “my car in any street in New England and the cops protect it like their own” (24).
In fact, he increasingly laments the fact that he is a failure. He is aware of the elusiveness of his dream and frets about the temporariness of being.
That Willy is dangerously unstable is symbolised by the constant car crashes. He appears to inhabit that space referred to as Leunig as “the emotional exile called madness”. Miller suggests that measuring our worth and potential happiness through the boundaries set by ‘more powerful’ institutions and by popular appeal can harm our emotional and psychological wellbeing.
The powers of suggestibility
Likewise Stephen Wheatley in Spies immerses himself in the spy narrative — a narrative that reflects the ambience of suspicion and fear of wartime Britain. The concept of the spy is suggested by Keith, “my mother is a German spy”, and willingly accepted by Stephen who wonders whether he is a hero or a traitor. It is a narrative imbued with the concepts of loyalty and betrayal. The Code Xs take on metaphoric significance as Stephen traces the origin of desire and recasts himself as the potential saviour. The marks in the diary that could be completely insignificant contain the clues to desire, and retrospectively confirm his desire. Code x = the kiss, the kiss of the Judas, the traitor, suggesting that Stephen is imperilled by his own infatuation for Mrs Hayward – the British spy. The Code Xs signify the fantasy of being his best friend’s mother’s boyfriend; it is to become enveloped by her warm luscious bosom; it’s the sweet fragrant smell of lamorna tinged with the Craven A cigarettes that seem to give Barbara Berrill an air of superiority and maturity (168). And the more Stephen follows, and is captivated by, his boyhood friend, the more determined he becomes to break away.
The war propaganda machine
Leunig is also critical of the Government’s war propaganda machine that paves the way for war, and in particular the most recent wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. He believes government gatekeepers whipped up fear and hatred towards a devilish dictator who had a tendency to spear babies with bayonets. The war was necessary (“weapons of mass destruction”) ; they assured the public it would be “quick”, “clean” and “effective”.
Critics of the war were emotively branded “peaceniks” and “appeasers”. As Leunig would suggest, such language tends to typecast those who oppose war as, at the worst, supporters of the dictator and at best people who condone the dictator’s reign of brutality. (143). Contrastingly, the editors, who “zealously built the case for war” were unable to see “through the deceptions”; they “ravenously” fostered the emotional climate of fear and hatred that was necessary for the government to justify war. (142) Leunig is particularly critical of Pamela Bone, an opinion writer at The Age, who supported the case for war and who prior to her death realised that it “had not been worth it, that the price had been too high”. Leunig writes, “I was appalled by her pro-war columns, but also sensed with sadness that she had made an impossible and tragic burden for her humanitarian conscience, because like many others I could see what would happen. It always does.”
“It always does.”
Certainly, Leunig’s oppositional stance has been vindicated. Even the prime minister at the time, John Howard, confessed to being “embarrassed” at the lack of weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the war itself that killed 600,000 civilians. Recently, The Age political reporter, Mark Kenny sums up the foolishness of the coalition of the willing in Shakespearean terms: “if history is written by the winners, then the story of recent US-led adventures in the Middle East certainly qualifies as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing”. Specifically, he says, “that the coalition of the willing left Iraq in 2003 to a corrupt sectarian government, led by Nouri al-Maliki, who ruled a disintegrating state with moral authority in short supply.”
Even worse, we left a traumatised Iraq, “all the psychotherapists in all the world would not be enough for Iraq”, quipped one psychologist, alluding to the conditions of hatred and resentment in war-torn countries that foster radicalisation.
Abdullah Muhsin, a former exile and London-based representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions says: “democracy in Iraq has unquestionably failed. But this is not a failure of democracy per se. It is a failure of the way it was organised and the arrogance of the decision-makers who thought they could impose their will on the world.”
According to Ramzy Baroud the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye, the threat of a new civil war in Iraq led by ISIL (Sunni Muslims with links to al-Qaeda) is a US creation. ”When Bush led his war on Iraq in order to fight al-Qaeda, the group simply didn’t exist in that country; the war however, brought al-Qaeda to Iraq. A mix of hubris and ignorance of the facts – and lack of understanding of Iraq’s history – allowed the Bush administration to sustain that horrible war.” Even more shocking, Mr Baroud believes “ISIL was born in the dungeon of a US prison in Iraq.”
To repeat Leunig, “I could see what would happen. It always does.”
In Wag the Dog, Conrad Brean organizes the war to distract the public from the president’s philandering. In this case, the public can quite easily be convinced that it is necessary to wage a war to persevere the American way of life. As Brean says to the CIA Agent Charlie Young, “You said go to war to preserve your way of life? Well, Chuck, this is your way of life. And if your spy satellites don’t see nothin’, if there ain’t no war, then you can go home and prematurely take up golf, my friend. ‘Cause there ain’t no war but ours.”
In this case the President of the United States is caught making inappropriate advances to an underage “Firefly Girl” less than two weeks before the election. (The scandal reflects President Bill Clinton’s “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky in 1996 that led to his impeachment.) Conrad Brean, a spin doctor, is engaged to divert public attention away from the scandal. In turn, he engages Hollywood producer Stanley Motss and together they construct a fake war with Albania.
As the main stage director, Motss inflates his own importance and wields so much control and power that he compares his role with the president’s. Whilst the ineffectual advertising campaign runs in the background, “don’t change horses in mid-stream”, Motss’ spin machine recasts the events leading up to the election in terms of Acts 1 and 2. As Motss states, “The war ain’t over til I say it’s over. This is my picture.”
And in many ways it is.
Bream uses subtle psychological powers of persuasion to influence, control and define the terms of the debate. Reminiscent of what Huxley labels the suggestible powers of the scientific dictator, Bream plants the seeds, nurtures them and then distracts, denies and obfuscates in order to simultaneously douse and inflame each issue. Does the government have a B3-bomber?
Specifically, he creates a narrative around the Albanian conflict based on the girl fleeing from the “terrorist” attack. Why Albania? Well, Albania has done nothing “for us”. They “keep to themselves. Shifty. Untrustable”. And so the Albanians become the convenient enemies. The Hollywood studio manufactures the sound effects, the burning bridge, the running stream, the white kitten and the burnt-out buildings in the background to create the authenticity of war.
Parallels are also evident with the Bush Administration’s representation of the war in Iraq as an attempt at overthrowing a dictator who supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction. Few in the media questioned the lack of WMDs. Why? Perhaps, because the truth simply didn’t make as interesting a story as the heroics of a bunch of American soldiers who were fighting for the “American way of life” and an end to terrorism.
In 2002, Joseph Charles Wilson (a United States diplomat) undertook a trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium to produce his weapons of mass destruction. In an article, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”, Wilson states that on the basis of his “experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war”, he has “little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
Such advice was inconvenient to the President.
Check out former President Bush’s apology to the American people for the fact that when they could not find weapons of mass destruction, they “fabricated the evidence” and “misoverexaggerated” the threat”.
Similarly, during the election campaign in 2001, Defence Minister Mr Peter Reith released images of children being thrown into or floating in the ocean. Known as the “children overboard” incident, the photos referred to another boat which was actually sinking. Reith concealed this knowledge, instead publishing photos that suggested that people would be prepared to kill their own children to get into Australia. Reith refused to set the record straight even after military and Defence Department advisers told him that the photographs were of another sinking ship and that the minister’s claim was wrong. When he was told by Mike Silverstone that a video the minister also claimed as evidence of children being thrown actually did not show that, he replied, ”Well, we’d better not see the video, then.”
Compare the carefully stage-managed PR machine, Al Hayat, run by ISIS
Naomi Wolfe asks whether the “ISIL videos” of the beheadings are true? Are they just a case of “fear porn”?
“Why do I often not take political narratives at face value as they are dictated to the press? A. Because I am a journalist… but more importantly, b) because I worked for two presidential campaigns”. (Naomi Wolfe)
The Islamic State and the Levant (ISIS), which now controls a large part of north-west of Iraq and north-east of Syria, has declared a Caliphate, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The fanatical idea of a Caliphate has, according to a CIA source, captured the imagination of up to 15,000 foreign fighters from more than 80 countries.
How? Primarily through propaganda.
“They look for teenagers who are unsatisfied with their life and are unsatisfied with their prospects. They offer a sense of belonging, the whole idea that you are a jihadist; that you are part of this heroic jihadi community.”
The use of propaganda to manipulate the reality of “believers”
In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs know how important it is to control the animals’ political and social reality; they also know it is important to control the “facts” and rewrite history – their founding myth (The Battle of the Cowshed) – to present Napoleon as a heroic cult figure.
There are many similarities between Napoleon and the former Commander-in Chief of the North Korea, Kim Jong-Il, who once stressed, “I rule through music and literature.” According to writer Jang Jin-sung (Dear Leader) who was a member of North Korea’s elite propaganda machine in the late 1990s, the Leader cemented his path to power, not through a military career, by working as a creative professional for the Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department.
Jang Jin-sun says, “Yes, he was a dictator by means of physical control, but he was also a dictator in a more subtle and pervasive sense: through his absolute power over the cultural identity of his people.”
In Dear Leader, Jang Jin-sun notes, that as a worker in the Party’s Propaganda Department, he took on the identity of an outsider, and wrote South Korean poetry in support of King Jong-il. So successful was one of his poems that he was subject to an “Extraordinary Summons” and singled out for praise for his “gun barrel” poem that set the standard for the Songun (military first) era.
Just like George Orwell’s Squealer in Animal Farm, who, as a master of the propaganda machine, manipulated and twisted the animal’s reality to justify the brutal takeover, so too, do the jihadists justify the power grab as a holy war.
The brutal pigs, convinced the animals that they were actually acting in their best interests. Likewise, the IS leaders encourage disaffected youth to recognise the promise of a fantastical holy land.
The idea of the Caliphate (the holy centre of Islam), is based on a carefully constructed historical-religious narrative, mostly fantastical, that justifies jihad – a religious war – as a means of entrenching one’s power base.
As former senior intelligence analyst Paul Monk explains, at the core is a fanatical idea that there was a “glorious Muslim caliphate in which the purity of Koranic revelation provided the basis for the only possible true social order. Corrupt Muslims ruled the Arab world. The only hope for the restoration of Allah’s divine order is jihad to overthrow all this and restore the caliphate.” They seek to kill unbelievers and impose true Islam on those who submit.
The supply of information
Have you heard of the Border Force Act? Not many people have. The Act was passed quietly on May 14, 2015 by both major parties. Anyone disclosing adverse information about detention centres faces two years’ jail. On this particular day, the newspapers were more concerned about Johnny Depp’s dogs that had slipped illegally into the country.
Some say this law amounts to an “iron curtain of secrecy” because there is a great deal to hide. And the irony: doctors and teachers who inform the public about abuses to children in detention centres could get jail. However, doctors and teachers who fail to report suspected abuse of children in schools and in their homes could also face jail (owing to mandatory reporting laws).
The propaganda machine itself: the use of hi-tech gadgets
In this case, the image is everything. The recent terror raids in Sydney and Brisbane (September 2014) were prompted by the alleged directive of one of the (Australian IS commanders), Mohammad Ali Baryalei who ordered that an Australian cell member, Azari, film a shocking terrorist act (a beheading) and send it to Al Hayat Media for distribution around the world via social and mainstream media.
Al Hayat is a highly sophisticated media outlet of IS. It streams continuous propaganda videos, filmed in high definition and expertly edited with music, action scenes from the battlefield and even scenes from video games like Call of Duty.
Al Hayat produced the videos of three American and British men who have all died at the hand of a fanatic’s knife. This appalled the world and spurred western military intervention.
As political commentator Waleed Aly states: “What would matter is the image. The video had to be made, the event had to be broadcast. This matters more than the killing itself …. For us in Australia, it’s most dangerously a symbol: a brand that a young man can claim for himself; a flag in which he can wrap himself – and his proposed victim.”
Dr Munjed Al Muderis, an Australian-Iraqi Surgeon who fled Iraq because he refused to cut off the ears of renegade soldiers, says: “It’s almost impossible to beat brainwashing like this. That’s why IS will win. They’re contained in the region for now, but pose a grave threat to the West.
He says the current wave of brainwashing is similar to Ayatollah Khomeini’s. During the Iran-Iraq war he sent Iranian boys as young as 12 into battle convincing their families they’d be martyrs.
(Curiously, the same thing happened to Admal Kasab, the only surviving Mumbai terrorist who was indoctrinated by the Pakistan LeT, to such an extent that he believed the terrorist acts would turn him into a home-grown hero. He truly believed that he was in a “war like situation” when he crossed the border into India with the view to waging holy jihad. Armed with the desire of a glowing afterlife, Kasab believed that “we would die waging jihad, our faces would glow like the moon. Our bodies would emanate scent. And we would go to paradise.” Kasab was shocked when he was taken to the morgue and witnessed the decomposing bodies, covered in flies. 166 people lay dead because of his delusions.)
Of course they are not the only ones to have a monopoly on manipulated realities.
What about counter-terrorism?
As Dr Anne Azza Aly, research fellow at Curtin University, says ” all terrorism is theatre and all counter-terrorism is theatre,” which means that just as the terrorists seek to construct just the right image, so too does the Government manufacture a spectical in its bid to show to the public that it is prioritising public security above all else.
Dr Aly explains, “I could go down to Toys-R-Us and get one of those light sabre things that goes “zhoot zhoot” and every time you walk into my classroom I could go, “Wait a minute.” Zhoot zhoot and that would have an effect because that’s what security is. That’s what counter-terrorism is … It’s all about theatre”. She connects the show with perception: “It is about convincing people and changing people’s minds to a particular world view, whether that world view is that of ISIS and the Islamic State or whether that world view is that of the Australian Government and democratic values and so on and so forth.”
Likewise, Randa Abdel-Fattah (author and human rights activist) also agrees and believes the televised raids and back-to-back coverage was “like an NCIS episode, almost live feeds”, with the aim of whipping up mass hysteria.
“It could have been done stealthily, proportionately but that would have robbed the occasion for an opportunity of some serious theatre. But I would go one step further. Not only did it provide theatre, not only did it give a sense for Australians to get behind the raids and the wall-to-wall coverage in the media, but it reinforced this wider narrative of Muslims as criminals.” (Q&A, ABC, 22 September 2014)
Once again, it was the image that was critical. Omarjan Azari was one of the “terrorists” to be arrested in the largest counterterrorism operation in Australia’s history (September 2014). The image of the 22-year-old apprentice motor mechanic handcuffed on the grass int he dark outside his home in Sydney’s west was very powerful.
Although, as feminist critic and author, Naomi Wolfe, asks, was it just “fear porn”? Were these videos of the beheadings actually staged by the US government? As a journalist, she would prefer two independent sources before accepting something as true.
“Why do I often not take political narratives at face value as they are dictated to the press? A. Because I am a journalist… but more importantly, b) because I worked for two presidential campaigns”. (Naomi Wolfe)
And another example …
In 2004, USA Today published detailed reports of an externally monitored investigation of 720 stories written by one of its longest-serving reporters, Jack Kelley, and found he had fabricated substantial portions of at least eight extensive articles over the past decade, including a face-to-face encounter with a suicide bomber in Jerusalem and his role in a high-speed chase last year for Osama bin Laden. The publication also told its readers that a February 2000 Kelley report about Cuban refugees who died in a storm “was a lie from start to finish”. Kelley’s photograph of one victim was published, but the newspaper’s later investigation revealed that the woman was “alive, married, pregnant and now living in the south-eastern United States”. (Refer: “Don’t believe everything you read”, Matthew Ricketson, The Age, 1/5/04).
In 1999, Media Watch revealed how broadcasters John Laws and Alan Jones sold their editorial views for thousands of sponsors’ dollars.
Language and the narrative of war
Stories consist of words that are carefully chosen to gain an impact. Hence the choice of words and phrases will play a pivotal role in how we interpret an event. What words are used and for what reason? Who chooses the words?
According to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”.
We interpret reality through language and as we name our reality we can extend or contract our horizons. Similarly, Desmond Tutu states, “language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.”
Compare these comments in the wake of the New Orleans (Hurricane Katrina) tragedy that took place in 2005.
“I think we have a clean sheet to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities.” (Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans’ wealthiest developers.)
“I really don’t see it as cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed uptown … This isn’t an opportunity. It’s a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind?” (Jamar Perry, September 2005 in the Red Cross shelter in Louisiana) (Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine).
Ex-prime Minister Malcolm Fraser is critical of the current Liberal Government’s use of militaristic language to control the debate concerning refugees. He says the language suggests “a deliberately covert approach, akin to being under attack” and “guides the response of all within the system who believe they can act with impunity.”
Subsequently, with regards to the allies’ war slogans, euphemistic terms such as “stay the course” and complete “our mission” were constantly proven to be misleading because there was never a realistic “mission”. It seems when NATO and Australian finally withdraw next year, they will be leaving, according to Sandy Gall, who set up the Afghanistan Appeal, a legacy of obscene corruption, unprecedented level of insecurity and the certainty that the Taliban will regain a foothold.
Conrad Bream very specifically ensures that the language used for war presents the American position in a strategic manner. He insists that America is “going to war”; “we have not declared war”. America is the helpful partner — not an aggressor.
Indeed, George Orwell makes language a central concept in both his masterpieces, 1984 and Animal Farm, and suggests, like Wittgenstein, that our realities are created through language.
In 1984, Big Brother’s control of the party’s propaganda machine and language enables it to control the past and thereby shape people’s present and future realities. O’Brien predicts that by 2050, the language will be reduced to such an extent that no one will be able to understand a typical 1984-conversation. For example, the aim of Newspeak is to reduce language and narrow the range of thought. As Winston states the “whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six worlds – in reality only one word.” (60) He cynically states, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” The philosophy of Newspeak is that if people do not have the word, then they cannot think of the concept. By eliminating words, the party can control people’s range of thought.
Like Huxley, Professor Daniel Schacter, leading memory researcher and Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, also draws attention to the prominent role played by “suggestibility” in his theory of the ”Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers‘. He says our views and opinions can be swayed and distorted by those in a position of power. This often happens when we are consistently misinformed or when we are in a position of powerlessness or ignorance, dependent upon those who have access to knowledge or who occupy a position of authority or high status. Although he is narrating the story, Stephen Wheatley’s relationship with Keith in ‘Spies’, and his position of subordination influences the message. Indeed he is quite “suggestible” and because of this he recreates events from an apparent position of weakness. Ever since, Keith proposed the idea that his mother is a German spy, the idea immediately becomes a vivid possibility for Stephen owing to Keith’s status and his reverence for his idol and leader. Stephen becomes trapped in a fantasy world whereby he sees himself as being led, firstly by Keith and then by the mother.
Likewise, in Animal Farm, the pigs’ superior literacy skills mean that they control the public relations machine that entrenches their power. Through subtle means of suggestibility they ensure that the animals defer to their higher powers of wisdom because they have access to the knowledge that should ensure a successful revolution. Aware of their dependency and position of powerlessness, the other animals have no choice but to concur with the pigs, although intuitively some are aware of their manipulation. They are subjected to a life of controlled obedience and subservience which reaches a pinnacle when Boxer is carried away to the knackery.
Slogans and songs influence the message of the powerful
Bream is particular about the use of slogans and Levinson devotes considerable air-space to the role of the songwriter in influencing the public’s reception to the war story.
As Bream states, “we remember the slogans, we can’t even remember the fucking wars. Y’know why? Cause its show business. That’s why I’m here. Naked girl, covered in Napalm. Five marines Raising the Flag, Mount Suribachi. V for Victory, Y’remember the picture, fifty years from now, they’ll have forgotten the war. Gulf War? Smart bomb, falling down a chimney. Twenty five hundred missions a day, 100 days, one video of one bomb Mr. Motss. The American people bought that war.”
Bream also states, “The truth? I was in the building when we shot that shot – we shot in a studio, Falls Church, Virginia. One-tenth scale model of a building.” In response to Motss’ questions about the truth, he states, “how the fuck do we know? You take my point?”
It’s a very salient point indeed. One that was echoes the treacherous and dictatorial Napoleon in Animal Farm.
Although the pigs did not have recourse to digital technology, they were nevertheless able to fabricate the Battle of the Cowshed, their founding myth, because they alone had recourse to “historical evidence”. Originally, Snowball bravely fights Mr Jones during an audacious and glorious move whereby he endangers his own life to selflessly motivate and inspire the other animals. In the fabricated version, Squealer informs the animals that Snowball was a traitor and he fled at the critical moment of the battle. His injury was apparently staged. He explains, “the plot was for Snowball, at the critical moment, to give the signal for flight and leave the field to the enemy”. He was in league with Jones from the start and in fact attempted to “lure” the animals to their doom. He would have succeeded if not for “our heroic Leader, Comrade Napoleon”.
Orwell suggests that the pigs can achieve this reinterpretation because of the “secret documents” which only they can read. Accordingly, access to knowledge and information empowers the leaders. The other animals who are illiterate are unable to challenge or dispute this version.
The story of the war hero who was “shot down behind enemy lines” is spread by the contagious song that captivates the nation. The “old shoe” symbolises and captures the government’s patriotic frame of reference even the “war hero” inconveniently turns out to be a criminally insane army prison convict who is dangerous without his medication.
Likewise, the slogan “war on terror” has been one of the catchiest slogans during the past 10 years. Linguists such as Dr Louise Richardson, political scientist and the vice-chancellor at St Andrew’s University, critiques the slogan “war on terror” on the grounds that it creates and legitimizes an enemy that in reality does not exist. Brean also states, you “can’t have a war without an enemy. You could have one, but it would be a very dull war.”
Finally, a news report about a violent incident in Albania is shown, but it is ambiguous as to whether this is a true or fabricated event. Is it still part of the fictional war? As fact and fiction merges, Levinson suggests that it hardly matters. Viewers are by now too skeptical.
In fact, after seeing this film, it is difficult to believe or take for granted anything that emerges from the Government’s public relations departments or their offshoots, or in the media.
I find it hard to believe anything to do with refugee camps, missing aeroplanes, enemy missiles and Israeli settlements. You cannot help seeing every image on the news as a consequence of cleverly fabricated factors such as voiceovers, fake make-shift backgrounds and jingles.
For a discussion of the pivotal power of language in shaping realities, see: inclusive versus exclusive public language.
A final note on the Anzac Day Traditions
The Anzac Day: realities and myth
Anzac Day: whilst Australians mourn the loss of 61,000 soldiers who “never came home” from the First World War, and the failed landing at Gallipoli (8th May 1915), many public commentators question the selective focus on this campaign as a focus of nation building.
Ex-prime minister Paul Keating is critical of the shift from the federation (January 1 1901) to the Anzac Day in terms of defining Australia’s national psyche; federation was after all an unparalleled democratic success. He preferred to make Kokoda in Paua New Guinea Australi’s sacred place on the grounds that if a war should be a defining event, then one should focus on historical events in which Australians were fighting to repel a direct attack on the nation. As John Hirst asks, “what sort of cringing colonial outfit was it that thought it did not properly exist until it took part in an imperial war?”
Specifically, our founders made a virtue of the absence of military glory when forming the colony. (Perhaps they conveniently overlooked the “frontier wars”.) Whilst it remains the costliest conflict in terms of deaths and casualties some ask, “what of those who have fought and perished on our own soil”. Historians Professor Henry Reynolds, Tony Roberts and Jonathan Richards who studied the role of Queensland’s Native Police force from 1856 to 1900, suggest that its aim was to “kill Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland” and as a result up to 30,000 aboriginals were killed owing to “dispersal” policies.
So why now, the shift to focus on virtues of military glory?
Lindy Edwards, senior lecturer in politics at the University of NSW, states that the multicultural Australian narrative of the 1980s and ’90s gave way to a story of white mateship, barbecues, and an increasing emphasis on the Anzac myth as defining Australian identity. (Lindy Edwards is also the author of The Passion of Politics.) In other words, the political, social and cultural gatekeepers have selectively focused on one particular story to stimulate sentimental and patriotic sentiments, often to the exclusion of other events.
See Julie Kimber’s article, “Jingoistic bluster encouraged our boys to go to war”, (The Age, 5/9/14). Ms Kimber argues that during World War I state-sponsored propaganda and powerful institutions and community spokespersons glorified war in order to encourage young men to enlist in a war wherein 60,000 families in Australia were “left without a son, father or brother”. “In towns across Australia men were pressured into enlisting by patriotism, also by newspapers, recruitment drives, white feathers and bluster.” The war fervour praised volunteers and denounced “slackers” and “shirkers”. One country paper insisted that “nothing short of conscription will shunt many of our burly young manhood into the firing line. Some of their cowardly skins would be all the better for a little Turkish bronzing”. Men between 18-21, who were ideal “cannon fodder” were also encouraged to join by the police, teachers and business leaders. Those who failed to join were sent white feathers – a sign of their cowardice.
Dr Jennifer Minter, “Framing our realities” with reference to The Lot (Michael Leunig), Wag the Dog and Animal Farm (George Orwell)
See Our Video tour of an Essay on Whose Reality with reference to Wag the Dog.
See also our VCE workbook for students: The Language of Persuasion: an essay-writing guide.
Please click here to download a PDF version of the Exercises in the Language of Persuasion: an essay writing guide for immediate use. By using these exercises, you will be able to follow our support material on each exercise (See “turn to exercise”). Each “turn to exercise” includes key strategies, suggested responses, students’ samples and assessors’ marks and comments.