During a recent online Science Party Q & A, one of my colleagues, Gary Davies, spoke of his despair whenever he hears our lawmakers trot out policies or bills that lack rationality. I feel his pain. We have been on a slippery slope to a blurred reality for a very long time, the roots of which can be traced back to the very first use of propaganda during times of war. In more modern eras, propaganda was refined for use in the general population and became known as “public relations”; a means of influencing the public to the benefit of corporations or government agendas. Later still, the techniques were adapted for advertising. At its best, PR was used to help end slavery, but at it’s worst, it was and continues to be used for increasingly perverse purposes, including justification for war and the concomitant spread of fear and xenophobia, or decimating the public sector alongside the redistribution of wealth from the middle to the top. Do ethanol producers really need government subsidies? Is it true that wages cannot increase in times of record profits? Is it good for all that over 700 companies paid zero tax in Australia in recent years while having a collective income of over 500 billion dollars annually?
The media is often a complicit partner in selling ideas that any rational person would reject. That is the real art of PR – gaining popular acceptance for abhorrent policies and acts. You do not need PR to sell an idea that is transparently for the greater good.
The lead-up to the Korean War provides a perfect example of how some sections of the media aids governments in these endeavors.
The US believed that the Chinese backers of North Korea had been making and stockpiling bioweapons – as had the US itself (despite post WWII conventions banning their use) and, fearing such weapons would be used against them, the US was determined it would strike first. Doing so however would present a PR nightmare on the home-front. Enter the propaganda experts and their assets within certain publications. The result was a series of articles around the nation aimed squarely at getting the population to accept a first strike as the only option available. Here is a summary of some of those stories:
March 12, 1949. UP reports Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal as stating that the US “leads the world in germ warfare research;” that germ weapons are “definitely not the fantastic killers they have been labelled,” but could be “a cheap and most important means of warfare.” Major General Alden H Wyatt, head of the Army Chemical Corp reiterates that “potentially” the spreading of disease germs “is a most important means of warfare.” It is stressed that the US program is aimed “primarily” at defense and that the US is quite prepared to strike back with biological weapons if other nations should attack with them
May 27, 1949. UP reports an assertion by the former chief of the air-borne infection project at the US biological warfare headquarters at Camp Detrick, Dr. Theordor Rosebery. Dr. Rosebery states that the practicality of germ warfare cannot be proven unless it is used in war. He also warns that “defense against BW (biological weapons) as a whole is pitiably weak, so weak that none of us, civilian or military, can find much comfort in its prospect.”
July 21, 1949. AP reports that the army has asked Congress for an extra 3.3 million to improve both the “defensive and offensive aspects of war with biological weapons.”
September 10, 1949. AP reports Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Brock Chisolm as declaring that biological weapons would make “large armies, navies and air forces” obsolete along with the atomic bomb. Dr. Chisolm also claims that scientists have found “one substance so deadly that seven ounces, properly distributed, could kill the people of the world within six hours.” He does not name the substance.
June 25, 1950. The undeclared war in Korea begins.
July 26, 1950. UP reports that “defensive measures against germ warfare are being drawn up.” The scientist being quoted is familiar with the program and adds “that they include no new rays or other ‘magic’ means of coping with germs”. Instead, the measures would consist of “training health officers in known medical and public health practices - but on an emergency basis.”
November 3, 1950. AP reports that the armed forces are looking ahead to wars fought with radiological poison weapons, germ warfare, guided missiles and special devices to make maps of enemy terrain under cover of night or clouds.
December 28, 1950. UP reports that the Federal Government is urging “civil defense workers to prepare for nerve gas and germ warfare attacks upon American Cities.” The story adds that a manual issued by the Health Resources division states that “automatic detection devices are essential for adequate protection” but ominously concludes that such devices are not available at a price which would make their purchase and use for civil defense “practical.”
There is a clear message seeping out of these stories. It goes like this: the US has the most advanced germ warfare program in the world. It wants to use this program in a defensive manner only but is carefully leaving the door ajar for a first strike option. We also learn that the program needs to be evaluated under combat conditions. Next, we are treated to the prospect that the US will probably soon suffer a germ warfare attack – followed by the” awful truth” that civil defense is inadequately trained and equipped to cope with such an attack if it ever occurs. Once these seeds have been planted, the reader is left to conclude for themselves that a pre-emptive strike is the only viable option.
Propaganda, advertising, public relations, lies, fake news, conspiracy theories. All part of the same spectrum of deceit and manipulation.
In 2008, Cass Sunstein, an American expert in behavioral economics as well as a legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional, administrative and environmental law, published a paper through Harvard Law School which looked at the rise of conspiracy theories and the social networks through which they grow and spread. He took particular aim at Right Wing conspiracy theories, for example that 9/11 was an Israeli job.
Sunstein identified the risks involved in the spread of such propaganda; especially its potential to incite violence. How right he was, He also identified the mechanisms through which the theories form and prosper. In particular, he pointed to cognitive blunders, informational and reputational influences and crippled epistemology.
In the US, the peddling of fake news and conspiracy theories is big business. Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV shows are dedicated to the cause and have millions of supporters. Some of the voices within this section of the US media make Alan Jones and Ray Hadley look like spiteful hacks (Oh, wait…).
All of this has given rise to a new Nationalism led by White Supremacists and assorted like-minded groups while making celebrities out of people like Lauren Southern and Milo Yiannopoulos, and locally, Pauline Hanson. She is used because her outlandish views attract audiences, whether in favor or against her peculiar brand of ignorance. And audience equals revenue.
Meanwhile, “Freedom of Speech” is the rallying cry used to ensure the right to continue spewing their hate while pretending they themselves are the victims.
It was never inevitable that we ended up where we are now – with the all-important overlap between truth and belief completely excised from public discourse leaving us in a place where, if the thought comes into your head, it is quite acceptable to present it as a fact; a place where the news cycle allows last week’s set of facts about stories A, B and C to be seamlessly replaced by a new set of facts this week on those same stories.
No, it was never inevitable, but we ignored every single signpost along the way.
Earlier this year I decided to enter politics. I joined the Science Party because the very nature of science is a bulwark against crippled epistemology. The Party also has a very savvy, young and ethical leadership with a commitment to producing evidence-based policies.
In May, I will join three others as a Science Party candidate for the federal senate. One of my first commitments would be toward parliamentary reforms such as installing an independent Speaker. I will also call out dog whistlers, liars, propagandists and purveyors of fake news, and push for a tightening of the rules around travel entitlements. It is unconscionable that to get a disability pension, you virtually need to prove you are on death’s doorstep, while rules around travel entitlements for politicians are so lax that Senator Anning can spend more time in Victoria than he does in his own state among his actual constituents. Making it a complete mockery is that this travel is associated with his wooing of White Supremacists.
In tandem with that I would be working with my colleagues to fix climate and environmental policy, and to get needed reforms and improvements in health, education, welfare, tax law, human rights, and additionally in putting more funds into scientific and technological research and development. And into the arts. Let us never forget the arts.
One essential reform in education is a much broader and deeper emphasis on developing critical thinking skills.
Make Australia rational again. Vote One, the Science Party for NSW Senate seats in the Federal election this May.