Demonizing the Enemy a Hallmark of War

[kuzadd]

so a few posters were discussing propoganda during wartime, so here we go.

and it always works the same.................

During World War I, the German threat was depicted as a mad, marauding gorilla with a bloody club.

Recently, an American political cartoon asked the question, "What Would Mohammed Drive?" and answered it with a drawing of a man dressed in Muslim garb driving a rental truck with a missile hanging out the back.

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"For most human beings, it takes an awful lot to allow them to kill another human being," said Anthony Pratkanis, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "The only way to do it is to justify the killing, to make the enemy look as evil as possible."

Propaganda, both by governments and the private media, has evolved over the years as media has evolved. But, some say, the principle remains the same.

"The secret in propaganda is that when you demonize, you dehumanize,"

said James Forsher, a film historian and documentary filmmaker who has studied propaganda films, and who is an assistant professor of mass communications at California State University, Hayward.

"When you dehumanize, it allows you to kill your enemy and no longer feel guilty about it,"

he said. "That is why during World War II, a lot of caricatures became animals. … You can kill a monkey a lot more easily than you can kill a neighbor."

Fake Atrocities and Propaganda Films

Tales of atrocities also can dehumanize, as readers of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers learned when they got whipped up for the Spanish-American war with fake stories and sketches of Spanish atrocities that probably never happened. Arguably, it set a pattern for phony or embellished American wartime propaganda that would last at least through the Gulf War.

or incubator babies?

or that poor jesica Lynch, who just had to be 'rescued'

Buck-Toothed Japanese, Fanatical Arabs demonization

World War II posters showed shadowy Nazism looming over America and its citizens, and racist stereotypes of the Japanese with thick glasses, buck teeth, and sometimes animal-like features.

One amateur poster showed a stylized Japanese man carrying a limp, naked white woman over his shoulder and was emblazoned with the words, "This Is the Enemy." A poster produced by an American corporation showed a giant Hitler with a handgun and a Japanese man with a bloody knife looming on either side of the globe, with North America between them. "Warning!" the poster said. "Our Homes Are In Danger Now!"

Hollywood again spooled out patriotic films. This time, they included animated shorts that portrayed the Germans and, especially, the Japanese as ridiculous or racist caricatures, said Stefan Kanfer, author of Serious Business: Cartoons and America, from Betty Boop to Toy Story. Often, the cartoons featured well-known animation characters, such as Popeye in Scrap the Japs, he said.

Some believe such caricatures, and the racist attitudes they fostered, allowed America to tolerate the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war.

"I think our sensibilities are a little different, but not that different," Forsher said. "I don't think we're showing an Arabic population carrying knives and stabbing Americans. But then again, who is the villain in the new James bond film? North Koreans."

"I think the demonization of Islam and the Arab world is identical to what happened 100 years ago," Winter said. "The Arab is now a stock figure, a caricature, a symbol of fanaticism, of infinite cruelty and no regard for human rights."

doesn't that sound familiar? Yup it does!

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79071

and it is an issue of morality, though not religion, because as human beings, we should recognize, when "morality" is used in very immoral ways.

Edited June 6, 2007 by kuzadd

[kuzadd]

http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Military.asp

Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support.

Ya know like Iraq/9-11

While the issue of propaganda often is discussed in the context of militarism, war and war-mongering, it is around us in all aspects of life.

As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:

* Using selective stories that come over as wide-covering and objective.

* Partial facts, or historical context

* Reinforcing reasons and motivations to act due to threats on the security of the individual. or the country

* Narrow sources of “experts” to provide insights in to the situation. (For example, the mainstream media typically interview retired military personnel for many conflict-related issues, or treat official government sources as fact, rather than just one perspective that needs to be verified and researched).

* Demonizing the “enemy” who does not fit the picture of what is “right”.

* Using a narrow range of discourse, whereby judgments are often made while the boundary of discourse itself, or the framework within which the opinions are formed, are often not discussed. The narrow focus then helps to serve the interests of the propagandists.

[BC_chick]

"When you dehumanize, it allows you to kill your enemy and no longer feel guilty about it," he said. "That is why during World War II, a lot of caricatures became animals. … You can kill a monkey a lot more easily than you can kill a neighbor."

I never made the connection, but I also remember seeing Hitler's propaganda cartoons as one where an octopus (the Jewry) had the globe firmly in its grasp. I'm surprised that one wasn't mentioned in the examples cited.

[kuzadd]

"When you dehumanize, it allows you to kill your enemy and no longer feel guilty about it," he said. "That is why during World War II, a lot of caricatures became animals. … You can kill a monkey a lot more easily than you can kill a neighbor."

I never made the connection, but I also remember seeing Hitler's propaganda cartoons as one where an octopus (the Jewry) had the globe firmly in its grasp. I'm surprised that one wasn't mentioned in the examples cited.

I am familiar with that bit of propaganda.

How about Saddam Hussein as a spider and iraqnaphobia?

Maybe there has just been so much propaganda, it can't all be covered in one article?

BC_chick: "I never made the connection,"

I think that is the problem that too many people don't make that connection.

Do you recall, in the lead up to / and at the start the attack on iraq, the stats on the number of Americans that believed Iraq was connected to 9/11, it was something like 70% of the American population.

"Poll: 70% believe Saddam, 9-11 link

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...poll-iraq_x.htm

Sept.2003

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country.

Sixty-nine percent in a Washington Post poll published Saturday said they believe it is likely the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda. A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe it's likely Saddam was involved.

The belief in the connection persists even though there has been no proof of a link between the two.

President Bush and members of his administration suggested a link between the two in the months before the war in Iraq. Claims of possible links have never been proven, however. "

That's how it happened, the Bush administration "suggested" it over and over and over and over.

from GWB, to Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Don Rumsfeld etc., they suggested it over and over in a classic propogandist method, Called the BIG LIE.

It works on the premise that repeating a distortion , on a grand scale, will get the desired results.

It did. Since no one will believe anyone ( the Bush admin) would tell such a huge lie.

http://www.answers.com/topic/big-lie

"The phrase Big Lie refers to a propaganda technique developed by Adolf Hitler, and documented in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf which consists of telling a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe anyone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously"."

As did the WMD's claim.

Then you had the phony yellow cake claims to bolster the propaganda.

or how about the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud" How many times was that reiterated by the Bush admin??? BIG LIE

[kuzadd]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis46.html

The Big Lie About 'Islamic Fascism'

The latest big lie unveiled by Washington’s neoconservatives are the poisonous terms, "Islamo-Fascists" and "Islamic Fascists." They are the new, hot buzzwords among America’s far right and Christian fundamentalists.

President George W. Bush made a point last week of using "Islamofacists" when recently speaking of Hezbullah and Hamas – both, by the way, democratically elected parties. A Canadian government minister from the Conservative Party compared Lebanon’s Hezbullah to Nazi Germany.

The term "Islamofascist" is utterly without meaning, but packed with emotional explosives. It is a propaganda creation worthy Dr. Goebbels, and the latest expression of the big lie technique being used by neocons in Washington’s propaganda war against its enemies in the Muslim World.

the article goes on......

Both the terms "terrorism" and "fascist" have been so abused and overused that they have lost any original meaning. The best modern definition I’ve read of fascism comes in former Columbia University Professor Robert Paxton’s superb 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism.

Paxton defines fascism’s essence, which he aptly terms its "emotional lava" as: 1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign "contamination."

Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors. All successful fascists regimes, Paxton points out, allied themselves to traditional conservative parties, and to the military-industrial complex.

and another excerpt

None of the many Muslim groups opposing US-British control of the Mideast fit Paxton’s definitive analysis. The only truly fascist group ever to emerge in the Mideast was Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Phalange Party in the 1930’s which, ironically, became an ally of Israel’s rightwing in the 1980’s.

It is grotesque watching the Bush Administration and Tony Blair maintain the ludicrous pretense they are re-fighting World War II. The only similarity between that era and today is the cultivation of fear, war fever and racist-religious hate by US neoconservatives and America’s religious far right, which is now boiling with hatred for anything Muslim.

Under the guise of fighting a "third world war" against "Islamic fascism," America’s far right is infecting its own nation with the harbingers of WWII totalitarianism.

as it did in WW2, against the Jews at that time

another excerpt

There is nothing in any part of the Muslim World that resembles the corporate fascist states of western history. In fact, clan and tribal-based traditional Islamic society, with its fragmented power structures, local loyalties, and consensus decision-making, is about as far as possible from western industrial state fascism.

The Muslim World is replete with brutal dictatorships, feudal monarchies, and corrupt military-run states, but none of these regimes, however deplorable, fits the standard definition of fascism. Most, in fact, are America’s allies.

I especially find this segment interesting:

Claims by fevered neoconservatives that Muslim radicals plan to somehow impose a worldwide Islamic caliphate are lurid fantasies worthy of Dr. Fu Manchu and yet another example of the big lie technique that worked so well over Iraq.

this is inciteful also:

As Prof. Andrew Bosworth notes in an incisive essay on so-called Islamic fascism, "Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism."

and then this , where/who are the modern fasicsts?

However, there are plenty of modern fascists. But to find them, you have to go to North America and Europe. These neo-fascists advocate "preemptive attacks against all potential enemies," grabbing other nation’s resources, overthrowing uncooperative governments, military dominance of the world, hatred of Semites (Muslims in this case), adherence to biblical prophecies, hatred of all who fail to agree, intensified police controls, and curtailment of "liberal" political rights.

Someone thankfully, and I am not alone, can see the writing on the wall!

An excellent article and worth a read in it's entirety, though the truths in it are a bitter pill for us in the west.

It's time we in the west take a look in the mirror, a good hard look. Some amongst us had better do it, immediately.