propaganda – IPDGC Smart Power

Revisiting Holocaust Liberation: Paradoxical Propaganda?

February 13, 2015public diplomacy1 Comment

During an official tour of the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp, an Austrian Jewish survivor describes to General Dwight Eisenhower and the members of his entourage the use of the gallows in the camp. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of David Wherry

In the introduction to his article, “The Paradoxes of Propaganda,” John Brown discusses a rather famous Nazi-era film—widely considered to be propaganda—called Triumph of the Will. Propaganda is one of those terms that often get lumped in with public diplomacy, but in fact there are key differences, both in their purpose and practice.

Today, propaganda is nearly used as a pejorative, a one-sided tool to persuade publics through manipulation, symbols and tricky language. Public diplomacy, on the other hand, is a means of explanation (without necessarily feeding conclusions), and can involve not only an output, but a listening and responding component as well (Melissen, The New Public Diplomacy, 2005).

Triumph of the Will was largely a domestic success, but was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response outside of Germany; Brown explains that such blatant and obvious propaganda could create “deep popular hostility toward the propagandists who are seen as the perpetrators of lies.” The lesson of Triumph? Sometimes, the best propaganda doesn’t look like propaganda.

Nonetheless, this type of propaganda could—and would—have serious historical consequences. This past week marked the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and this year will mark similar anniversaries for concentration camps all over Europe. It marks the anniversary of when the world was first beginning to truly uncover the extent of Nazi crimes against humanity, document them and vow ‘Never Again.’ When General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his troops discovered Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchchenwald, in April 1945, he radioed back to Washington:

In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda’ (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Ohrdruf”, 2014)

Eisenhower also requested to bring journalists over to document what he found and bring it to public attention. The resulting reporting and photographs, while not specifically intended to be propaganda, do in fact represent yet another example of Brown’s paradoxes of propaganda: The photographs of liberated concentration camp survivors were certainly not meant to propagandize in the style of Triumph of the Will, but that may be what made them most powerful and effective.

Normally, propaganda is one of those words that leave a nasty taste in peoples’ mouths, but as J. Michael Sproule notes in Channels of Propaganda, “society exempts propaganda from condemnation when social influence is perceived to be in the general interest” (1994). There were no agendas with these photographs—that’s part of their effectiveness as not necessarily anti-Nazi, but pro-humanity.

It is important to be aware of the difference between propaganda and public diplomacy; one involves listening, communicating and explaining policies, while the other involves forcing a message. As the photos and film of concentration camps show, propaganda can influence a society to dangerous ends. While propaganda may have helped spur the events that would lead to the Holocaust, good public diplomacy can perhaps help ensure it never does again.

With increasing anti-Semitic sentiments and physical attacks toward Jews making a comeback in Europe, as well as an ongoing undercurrent of Holocaust denial in the Middle East, this is a relevant topic more than ever. A timely Holocaust documentary, Night Will Fall, is finally seeing the light of day this year almost seven decades after it was originally commissioned by the British government, then shelved due to Cold War politics.

Unlike with public diplomacy, one of Brown’s paradoxes about propaganda was that one must hate it to do it well; filming the aftermath of a state-sanctioned attempt at genocide was certainly no easy task. Documentation like this may not work like propaganda in the traditional sense, but that’s part of its paradoxical beauty.

Miriam Smallman is a junior studying journalism at The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

Eye of the Beholder: Special Force 2 and the Propaganda Game

March 26, 2013July 9, 2020Middle EastLeave a Comment

“All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably proaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda… when artists or art critics make the assertion that art excludes propaganda, what they are saying is that their kind of propaganda is art, and other kinds of propaganda are not art. Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is the other fellow’s doxy.” – Upton Sinclair

A few months ago I wrote about America’s Army, a first person shooter game developed by the U.S. Army as a recruitment tool for young people. In it, the player participates in a round-based tactical confrontation with other players online, simulating realistic combat conditions. Judging from the series’ more than 11 million registered users who have played a combined 260 million hours, America’s Army has achieved a level of acceptance in American society.

The U.S. is not the only country where government actors have created a game as a recruitment tool. In Lebanon, the armed political and religious group Hezbollah has created its own video game franchise, in a similar vein to America’s Army. The Special Force games place the players in the shoes of a Hezbollah mujahid fighting against Israel. The most recent entry into the series, Special Force 2, was published on the anniversary of the 2006 war fought between Israel and Hezbollah.

Special Force 2 places the player in the midst of the 2006 war, reenacting several of Hezbollah’s victorious battles in the 34-day conflict. In the first mission, the player carries out the July 16 raid which captured two Israeli border patrol soldiers and brought them back into Lebanon to force a prisoner exchange. The second and third missions showcase battles where Hezbollah repulsed Isreali offensives – in Bint Jabril, a town that remained in Hezbollah position despite three Israeli attempts to take it, and in Wadi al Hujeir, a valley where Hezbollah guerrillas were able to hold off a massive Israeli offensive. A further challenge allows the player to capture a fictional island and sink a destroyer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDPrZREGvOY]

The propaganda twist with which Special Force 2 represents these battles is fascinating, if not exactly subtle. Lebanon is depicted as a bird-filled forest, with green, rolling hills; Israel is silent desert. At close range, Israeli soliders’ lips curl into a snarl – when killed, they fall to the ground calling out for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Video cutscenes between missions only depict dead or defeated Israelis, or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah shouting before cheering crowds. It’s a one-sided depiction of the war, which in reality Hezbollah won only at great cost. At no point does the player learn that close to 1,200 Lebanese were killed in the conflict, or that Lebanese infrastructure suffered nearly to $2.5 billion in damages. Everything culminates to glorify Hezbollah as protectors of the realm, and the military equal (or superior) to Israel.

Upon release, the game garnered little reaction (save scorn) from western audiences, but in the Arab world Special Force 2 gained plenty of positive attention. Special Force 2 quickly ran out of its initial 100,000 physical copies and soon became available for free online. The audience was Arab youth in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Bahrain and the UAE, but before too long, an unofficial English patch was created so that non-arabic speakers could play the game as well. It is difficult to know how many people were playing the game, but by all accounts, Special Force 2 had reasonable staying power. A friend of mine reported to have seen the game played in Lebanese internet cafes more than three years after its initial launch.

The Special Force games showcase one way that governments can communicate with an audience using interactive media. They are a recruitment tool, proudly displaying Hezbollah’s military successes over Israel and projecting the career of a mujahid as one of power and strength. Speaking about the first game in the series, Mahmoud Rayya, an official from the Hezbollah media bureau, told the Daily Star that “in a way, Special Force offers a mental and personal training for those who play it, allowing them to feel that they are in the shoes of the resistance fighters.”

The game also provides an opportunity for youth to “resist the Israeli occupation through the media,” according to Rayya. The box cover on the original Special Force declared that “the designers of Special Force are very proud to provide you with this special product, which embodies objectively the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon… Be a partner in the victory. Fight, resist and destroy your enemy in the game of force and victory.” By fighting in simulations of real battles, Arab youth experience these moments of Arab victories against Israel as a matter of personal agency. In a way, the game allows them to feel as thought they are a part of the battle against Israel, and that they can win.

For a game that stands so starkly to Western game experiences, Special Force 2 relies heavily on the work of Western developers. The game was built from assets illegally stripped the 2004 game Far Cry, developed by the German company Crytech and published by Ubisoft. Player controls, gun models, vehicles, animations, A.I. behaviors are all pulled from the original game, sometimes with a visual overhaul but often copied in their entirety. Whereas the Far Cry games take place in a tropical, leafy environment, Special Force 2 is largely barren. Looking at the game it’s clear to see which assets were created by Crytech and which were developed by Hezbollah – the quality of the textures as well as the level of detail applied to game objects is somewhat inferior for the latter.

farcry guns — Guns from the original Far Cry (left) are copied wholesale into Special Force 2 (right).

The games market in the Arab world is growing, but still largely ignored by the majority of games publishers and developers. Most focus on North America, Europe, and South Asia as their primary markets, maintaining virtually no presence in the Middle East and North Africa. Few foreign games dedicate the time or expense to translating their game to Arabic, which would require the conversion of their engines to a right-to-left writing system. Many Western games are furthermore perceived as culturally insensitive. In this space, games like Special Force 2 have greater appeal. Mahmoud Rayya states that Special Force was “designed to compete against foreign computer games that show Arabs as enemies and Americans as the heroes that defeat them.” Arab youth looking for a game that caters to Arab experiences may find much appealing in Special Force’s unique message.

Special Force 2 is undoubtedly a propaganda game. For its one-sided depiction of the 2006 war with Israel, and for the demonization of enemy soldiers, the game has earned that title. Yet one could also argue that Hezbollah has simply done with a modern day war what many commercial American games have done with wars from history. Here in the U.S., there is an impressive litany of World War 2 games that pit the player against a one-dimensional German or Japanese foe. As terrible as either of these imperialist powers may have been, can we reasonably claim that American games as an industry represent war with more depth or subtlety than Special Force 2?

An excellent Extra Credits lecture points out that our ability to recognize propaganda in games often depends on whether we agree with the game’s underlying message. In recognizing Special Force 2 as a propaganda game, we must also be prepared to question whether the games that we play present a truthful reflection of reality or simply one that fits with our own preconceptions. It is also worth remembering that Special Force 2 represents a broadly held narrative in the Middle East, and that for many, it is less of a propaganda game than others produced here in the United States.

Follow Derek Gildea on Twitter: @derekpost

Readers interested in learning more about Special Force 2 may be interested in watching an analytical video series produced by the author, available here.

Nation-building, COIN, and Communication

September 26, 2012Global Communication, Middle EastLeave a Comment

Yale’s Keith Darden and The George Washington University’s Harris Mylonas have an interesting piece in the current issue of Ethnopolitics (currently ungated) proposing a new way of thinking about nation- and state-building, and, by extension, counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. They argue that third-party powers (think: the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan) face a “Promethean Dilemma”: “How can they transfer coercive and organizational capacity to the local population without such capabilities being used to undermine the occupiers’ efforts to establish stable governance of the territory?”

Darden and Mylonas argue that current thinking emphasizes quickly building out the indigenous security forces (e.g., army and police). “When it comes to putting guns in the hands of the indigenous population, sooner is better,” from the mindset of those tasked with restructuring the country.

Darden and Mylonas recommend doing just the opposite, in two respects. First, the focus should be on building loyalty through cultural institutions, especially schools and religious organizations. “Coercive” institutions such as the police should come last. Second, external powers need to be willing to commit to a long-term, generational effort rather than looking for ways to extricate themselves as quickly as possible. Hence, they argue, nation-building comes before state-building, not vice versa.

I think the culture-specific focus of Darden and Mylonas’ argument has merit, though as made clear by the two most recent examples they raise, Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s impossible to imagine a reconstruction effort that doesn’t simultaneously build up the security apparatus while developing cultural institutions.

The point, however, seems to be more that external actors such as the United States can’t neglect – and indeed, must prioritize – education and other institutional modes of “indoctrination,” and also need to embrace long-term efforts rather than quick fixes (which never seem to be quick, at any rate).

It is always interesting to me, however, that discussions of state- and/or nation-building, and indeed COIN, tend to treat as an afterthought a society’s communication system, particularly its progress toward a liberal press-state system. Granted, millions of dollars are spent on development projects and other efforts related to communication, especially journalism training, but the theorizing of state-building and COIN typically give it merely a passing mention.

I would argue that the development of a responsible, independent, and professional media alongside an effective and equally responsible and professional government communication apparatus should be seen as key pillars in a post-conflict reconstruction effort. Indeed, doing so can be integral to improving security and defeating insurgents and terrorists.

Afghanistan offers a good example. Simplifying somewhat, a key component of the insurgents’ argument to the Afghan people is essentially this: “The government is corrupt and can’t provide security and services to you, but we can.” Now, this is admittedly a perverse argument given that another way of putting it would be “The government can’t protect you from us,” but that’s beside the point. The important thing is that if the people believe it to be true, and then believe its corollary argument that the insurgents can provide security and services, then the bad guys may eventually win over the people.

Furthermore, in this scenario a security-first approach is doomed because the enemy will be gradually gaining recruits and a corresponding ability to outgun the host government and its allies.

Given this, the insurgent propaganda needs to be met head on and effectively. This is, principally, the government’s job rather than the media’s. Let’s say, hypothetically, that the insurgents are wrong and in fact the government is doing a good job, or at least an increasingly effective job, of improving services, security, and infrastructure. How will the people know? One important way would be through government spokespeople and other officials communicating this progress to the local population. But this is impossible if government spokespeople aren’t trained to be effective communicators, if the communication bureaucracy is not well-established, or if there are not proper channels of communication.

A major problem for government communicators in these situations, however, is credibility. Whether it is because of sectarianism, other cultural or linguistic divides, or association with past (or present) government corruption, fledgling democracies are often fighting an uphill battle to be taken seriously by their constituents. Of course, to some extent simply becoming more responsive and effective at providing for the people can alleviate this problem. If the government isn’t actually credible, then neither will be its communication.

But another important determinant of government credibility can be a professional and independent media. I say “professional” because people in any society can spot amateurish journalism. Sensationalist and partisan or sectarian media are the prime offenders here, and they alienate audiences. (These concerns have always been the primary ones raised by government officials and journalists alike during the trainings I’ve led in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last few years.)

On the other hand, a professional media that are seen as independent from the government are more likely to be seen as credible. And if the messenger is credible, so to is the message.

So in our hypothetical, the best antidote to the insurgent argument that the government is corrupt and incompetent can be a free press reporting on a government’s successes.

Of course, an independent media is also going to be reporting on the government’s failures. But doing so is precisely what proves its independence and, if it’s done responsibly, its professionalism. By extension, it’s what will make the stories of progress more credible.

This is important for third-party and host governments, as well as occupying military forces, to understand. Too often, however, these folks fall into the trap of expecting nothing but good news from the local media, and assuming negative stories are a sign of bias or worse. This is counterproductive. Effective communication from government and military spokespeople does not begin by treating the media as your enemy.

Similarly, contemporary COIN strategy (if one can say there is such a thing), with its emphasis on a population-centric approach, could use a deeper understanding of the role of communication in building security. I was surprised, for instance, when I attended a multi-day COIN training hosted by ISAF for, primarily, NATO officers at a base outside Kabul in 2010, that literally nothing was mentioned about this. The only way in which communication was discussed was in terms of information operations (IO), which is decidedly not what I’m talking about.

I was, however, encouraged that several officers (mostly Australians) raised this problem in our feedback session on the final day. They had seen first-hand the importance of strengthening the institutions of communication, as well as learning themselves how to work with those institutions, during their time in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other COIN environments.

To return to Darden and Mylonas, who emphasize schools as a cog in nation-building, a key long-term approach to strengthening local communication systems is getting beyond Beltway Bandit approaches that simply pay NGOs (and professors) lots of money (well, not to the professors…) to do short-term trainings. Instead, those resources should be put into helping universities (and secondary schools when appropriate) develop journalism and public affairs curricula and programs. Too often, even when these projects are funded it is only on the journalism side. But many of the same skills that make one a good journalist make one an effective spokesperson: Both are, at the end of the day, about communicating effectively to the people.

These programs would include basic writing, reporting, and public speaking skills, as well as using inexpensive modern video and radio reporting. They would also include the development of internship programs that placed students in local and international media, and government agencies, thus giving students professional experience while simultaneously staffing the incipient communications infrastructure.

These programs have another benefit: They create a self-sustaining solution to the communication aspect of a successful nation-building (or state-building, depending on one’s emphasis) effort.

The State Department has begun such efforts at several Afghan universities over the last couple of years in an effort to seed future generations of communicators in that fledgling democracy. (Though these initiatives focus mostly on journalism education.) It will be interesting to see what blooms from these programs, assuming they are given a chance to succeed.