Munitions of the mind Munitions of the mind A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present day Philip M. Taylor Third edition Third edition Taylor ‘This scholarly, majestic survey, full of perceptive insights provides conclusive evidence that propaganda is a process unique to human communication regardless of time, space and geographic location and remains an integral part of human discourse. Taylor has done more than most to enhance our understanding of this complex subject and Munitions of the mind forces us to fundamentally rethink how we popularly regard propaganda … it transcends traditional disciplines and is in a real sense a multdisciplinary tour de force.’ Professor David Welch, University of Kent (on first edition) ‘A fascinating read and wide-ranging survey which should be essential reading for anyone interested in the operation and effects of propaganda.’ Professor Jeffrey Richards, University of Lancaster (on first edition) A classic work, Munitions of the mind traces how propaganda has formed part of the fabric of conflict since the dawn of warfare, and how in its broadest definition it has also been part of a process of persuasion at the heart of human communication. Stone monuments, coins, broadsheets, paintings and pamphlets, posters, radio, film, television, computers and satellite communications – propaganda has had access to ever more complex and versatile media. This third edition has been revised and expanded to include a new preface, new chapters on the Gulf War, information age conflict in the post-Cold War era, and the world after the terrorist attacks of September 11. It also offers a new epilogue and comprehensive bibliographical essay. The extraordinary range of this book, as well as the original and cohesive analysis it offers, makes it an ideal text for all international courses covering media and communications studies, cultural history, military history and politics. It will prove fascinating and accessible to the general reader. Philip M. Taylor is Professor of International Communications at the University of Leeds. His previous publications include War and the media: Propaganda and persuasion in the Gulf War. taylor 5/23/03 11:07 AM Page 1 Munitions of the mind Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:381 For Professor Nicholas Pronay Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:382 Munitions of the Mind Chapter 9 Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present era Third Edition Philip M. Taylor Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:383 Copyright © Philip M. Taylor 1990, 1995, 2003 The right of Philip M. Taylor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition published 1990 by P. Stephens Second edition published 1995 by Manchester University Press, reprinted 1998 and 2002 This edition published 2003 by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 1000, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for Cu ISBN 0 7190 6767 7 paperback This edition first published 2003 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset in Sabon by Koinonia, Manchester Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:384 1 Contents Acknowledgements page vii Preface to the New Edition viii Introduction Looking Through a Glass Onion: Propaganda, Psychological Warfare and Persuasion 1 Part One Propaganda in the Ancient World 1 In the Beginning … 19 2 Ancient Greece 25 3 The Glory that was Rome 35 Part Two Propaganda in the Middle Ages 4 The ‘Dark Ages’ to 1066 51 5 The Norman Conquest 62 6 The Chivalric Code 67 7 The Crusades 73 8 The Hundred Years War 81 Part Three Propaganda in the Age of Gunpowder and Printing 9 The Gutenberg Galaxy 87 10 Renaissance Warfare 89 11 The Reformation and the War of Religious Ideas 97 12 Tudor Propaganda 102 13 The Thirty Years War (1618-48) 109 14 The English Civil War (1642-6) 117 15 Louis XIV (1661-1715) 121 Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:385 Part Four Propaganda in the Age of Revolutionary Warfare 16 The Press as an Agent of Liberty 129 17 The American Revolution 133 18 The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars 145 19 War and Public Opinion in the Nineteenth Century 158 Part Five Propaganda in the Age of Total War and Cold War 20 War and the Communications Revolution 173 21 The First World War 176 22 The Bolshevik Revolution and the War of Ideologies (1917-39) 198 23 The Second World War 208 24 Propaganda, Cold War and the Advent of the Television Age 249 Part Six The New World Information Disorder 25 The Gulf War of 1991 285 26 Information-Age Conflict in the Post-Cold War Era 298 27 The World after 11 September 2001 315 28 Epilogue 320 Bibliographical Essay 325 Index 332 Contents vi Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:386 1 Acknowledgements I am indebted to the British Academy for financial support aiding the research for the original edition of this book, and to the following colleagues for comments and suggestions: Dr Tracy Rihill for her observations on the ancient sections; Dr Graham Loud for his views on the medieval period; Professor F. R. Bridge for his comments on the early modern period. My research students over the years have extended my knowledge still further: Ilse Howling, Fiona Assersohn, Damien Stafford, Kate Morris, Dr Nick Cull, Dr Sue Carruthers, Dr Gary Rawnsley, Paul Rixon, Hossein Afkhami, Steve Bell, and Graham Cook. A book like this takes many years of gestation and I am delighted therefore to acknowledge the assistance of many supportive professional colleagues and friends, especially Dr Tony Aldgate, Dr Steven Badsey, Philip Bell, Professor Robert Cole, Professor David Culbert, Professor David Ellwood, Professor Ian Jarvie, Professor John Grenville, Dr Frank MacGee, David Murdoch, Dr John Ramsden, Professor Jeffrey Richards, Peter Stead, Dr Richard Taylor, Dr Geoff Waddington, Professor Donald Cameron Watt, Professor David Welch, Dr Ralph White, Professor John Young. My colleagues at the ICS in Leeds also deserve mention for bringing different disciplinary perspectives to my thinking: Dr David Morrison, Howard Smith, Dr Brent MacGregor, Dr Simeon Yates, Dr Richard Howells, Dr Steven Lax, Judith Stamper, Dr Robin Brown. Former students offered considerable help in various aspects of the research, especially Debbie Whittaker, Cheryl Johnson and Ian Bremner. But as a whole, my history students from 1978-90, and my communications studies students since 1990 will probably never appreciate how significant they have been in helping to shape my thoughts on this topic. At least my wife, Sue, knows of her contribution. Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:387 This book first appeared in 1990, with a second edition in 1995. It was, until recently, the only single volume history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present day. No such volume can purport to be comprehensive, but it has proved necessary to update the final chapters and to add new ones that embrace the Balkan wars (including the 1999) Kosovo campaign and, of course, the so-called ‘war’ against international terrorism. As I write this new preface, the world is gearing up for another possible war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Leaflets have already been dropped there. This book attempts to place the conduct of propaganda during these events within a wider historical context. It retains its main thesis that propaganda is a much misunderstood word, that it is not necessarily the ‘bad thing’ that most people think it is. As a process of persuasion, it is value neutral. Rather, it is the intention behind the propaganda which demands scrutiny and it is that intention which begs value judgements not the propaganda itself. Much has happened since 1995, not least the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, or ‘9/11’ as it is now currently being described in shorthand. We are in the middle of another major propaganda campaign, although it is often difficult for us to identify it for what it is because we are living through it. News and views are all around us, speculation is rife, sides are being polarized. Indeed, the issue of Iraq notwithstanding, we may be on the verge of the greatest propaganda campaign ever seen as the West struggles to convince the Muslim world that this is not a war against Islam when many in the Islamic world genuinely believe that it is. President George W. Bush warns that the United States is in it ‘for the long haul’. If so, then we will see a new global struggle for hearts and minds that may be on a par with the Cold War. This book should, until its next edition, provide some clues as to how to identify propaganda for what it is, how it has evolved and – most impor- tantly – to judge for oneself the intentions behind those undertaking it. Crag Bottom Farm, Two Laws 31 December 2002 Preface to the New Edition Munitions_00_Prelims 4/11/03, 10:388 From the perspective of our modern information and communica- tions age, the word ‘propaganda’ continues to imply something evil. For some it is a cause of wars; for others, it is an even greater evil than war. Writing in 1926, Lord Ponsonby echoed the senti- ments of many when he wrote that propaganda involved ‘the defilement of the human soul [which] is worse than the destruction of the human body’. For the liberal-minded, its continued existence remains a cancer threatening to eat away at the body politic of our increasingly free and globalized society; a disease which somehow afflicts our individual and collective capacity to make up our own minds about what is happening in the world around us. Propaganda, it is felt, forces us to think and do things in ways we might not otherwise have done had we been left to our own devices. It obscures our windows on the world by providing layers of distorting condensation. When nations fight, it thickens the fog of war. Propaganda thus becomes the enemy of independent thought and an intrusive and unwanted manipulator of the free flow of information and ideas in humanity’s quest for ‘peace and truth’. It is therefore something which democracies, at least, ought not to do. It suggests the triumph of emotion over reason in a bureaucratic struggle by the machinery of power for control over the individual. It is a ‘dirty trick’ utilized by ‘hidden persuaders’, ‘mind manipulators’ and ‘brainwashers’ – Orwellian ‘Big Brothers’ who somehow subliminally control our thoughts in order to con- trol our behaviour to serve their interests rather than our own. But who are these propagandists? We all know about Dr Goebbels, the ‘Evil Genius’ of Nazi propaganda. But where do his counterparts lie, because lying is, after all, what they do? Since they Introduction Looking Through a Glass Onion: Propaganda, Psychological Warfare and Persuasion Munitions_01_Intro 4/11/03, 8:181 [...]... about the workings of the human mind in an era where nuclear weapons could readily destroy all human life on the planet, propaganda and psychological operations (as they are now called) have become genuine alternatives to war As this book will argue, that is what the Cold War was really all about, as are indeed many of the contemporary ‘information wars’ which now accompany international crises Propaganda. .. the reasons or the cause It is those reasons and causes which should be the legitimate objects of moral and critical analysis and judgement, not the propaganda itself As such, propaganda can be used for ‘good purposes’, just as it can be abused If the history of propaganda in the twentieth century appears to be largely a history of abuse, it does not follow that this has always been, and always will... people, by any available media, to think and then behave in a manner desired by the source, it is really a means to an end The methods employed vary according to the communications media available Communication with a view to persuasion is an inherent human quality It can take place in a private conversation or a mass rally, in a church or cinema, as well as on a battlefield It can manifest itself in the. .. century of the mass media as well as of Total Warfare, Cold Warfare and Nuclear Weapons, we have seen more of the horrors of war than any of our predecessors and we are therefore more aware of its consequences, with the result that we tend to place more emphasis on the merits of peace Yet prior to this age, war was regarded as a normal, even acceptable and indeed glorious, method of resolving disputes, an... Gauls Athens’ great rival was Sparta which, as is well known, revelled in the art of war Trained to fight by the state from an early age, Spartan warriors had been fully indoctrinated with the merits of war and bravery in battle by the time they were despatched to the battlefield During the so-called Messenian revolt against the Spartans, the second Messenian war which lasted for about twenty years after... Sculpture and architecture provide stronger evidence of a growing sophistication in the art of persuasion Statues of gods and men became larger and more realistic as individual politicians strove to project themselves and their achievements before the population But it is architecture that offers the clearest manifestation of propaganda in Classical Greece Athens provides a notable example of the use of this... psychological warfare are essentially organized processes of persuasion In wartime they attack a part of the body that other weapons cannot reach in an attempt to affect the way in which participants perform on the field of battle However, in the centuries before nuclear technology and psychology, before the likes of Einstein and Oppenheimer, of Freud and Jung, neither propaganda nor warfare had been... settle their differences and work with the naval power of the Athenians in repelling the successors of the Assyrians, the Persians under Darius, when they pushed into the mainland in the generation which followed At the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, the Athenians triumphed against overwhelming odds without Spartan help, the Spartans having been delayed – significantly – by a religious festival Our main... for power, propaganda is an instrument to be used by those who want to secure or retain power just as much as it is by those wanting to displace them For the smoke to rise, there must first be a spark which lights the flame Propaganda is that spark This perhaps explains why propaganda and war have always been inextricably connected Once war has broken out, propaganda has proved to be a weapon of no less... self-glorification Demosthenes spoke of the Propylaea and the Parthenon as symbols of Athenian honour at the expense of war against the Persians, and some of his own orations were designed as warnings on the dangers posed by Philip of Macedon Monumental sculptures were also erected to commemorate victories, such as those put up by Attalus I of Pergamum and Eumenes II to celebrate their triumphs over the Gauls Athens’ . mind traces how propaganda has formed part of the fabric of conflict since the dawn of warfare, and how in its broadest definition it has also been part of a process of persuasion at the heart of human communication first be a spark which lights the flame. Propaganda is that spark. This perhaps explains why propaganda and war have always been inextricably connected. Once war has broken out, propaganda has proved. of moral and critical analysis and judgement, not the propaganda itself. As such, propaganda can be used for ‘good purposes’, just as it can be abused. If the history of propaganda in the twentieth