A few weeks back New York Times Magazine asked the question: Could you kill baby Hitler? via Twitter and it’s made it to the point where presidential candidate Jeb Bush has weighed in.
The question itself has been beaten to death. If you want to see some of the better responses try here, here, and Colbert.
What I want to look at is the question and its relationship to war propaganda. Not only that, but I also want to talk about how we can fight it.
First, let me give you a quick take on the results of the poll that’s a little different from the NY Times Magazine.
- 42%: Want to take a strong action
- 28%: See something wrong with the question
- 30%: Understand how the media works
Here is what I mean by “how the media works.”
When corporate special interests want something accomplished (guns, corn, tobacco, war, technology, whatever they want to sell) they choose a strong moral position for the thing they want accomplished.
Many people get this.
What isn’t necessarily always clear is that the special interests also try to define the opposition. It’s much easier to win if you’re not actually fighting real opposition, but a position that you’re pretty sure you can beat.
Here are a few common ways this is done.
Pro WAR |
DeFINING THE
OPPOSITION
|
Strong |
Weak |
Freedom |
Socialism |
Choice |
No choice |
Principled |
Immoral |
Upstanding |
Criminal |
Righteous |
Equivocating |
The idea is that war should look “good” and moral and the opposition should look weak and immoral.
You also might recognize a few of these from other corporate special interest group fights.
Example: Baby Hitler question
So how does this work with the baby Hitler question?
Quite simply, it’s a leading question. By design, the question creates one side that appears strong, moral, principled, righteous, and upstanding. One side, the ‘yes’ side, that does what the question urges people to do.
It creates another side, the ‘no’ side, that seems uncertain, weak, immoral, criminal, equivocal, and potentially even on the side of Hitler.
This is how the question works as propaganda. Now you can point out that the question is propaganda, but this isn’t nearly as powerful.
What you want to do is demonstrate your strength, your principals, how you stand for freedom, etc. Some folks on Twitter responded beautifully to the question.
In my favorite response, Hayes Brown shows what real strength and principles look like:
The beauty of this response is that it demonstrates an equally strong action that is actually much more moral than the killing of a baby.
And, at the same time, it points out how the question works as propaganda by urging some type of yes/no answer.
Countering war propaganda
We’re going to hear the calls for war. We heard them most recently against Iran and we know that the people who want war will use this, once again, to try and fire up a war.
Here’s Mitt Romney demonstrating how this works:
After Paris, it’s clear: Doing the minimum won’t make us safe. It’s time the president stopped hedging and took meaningful steps to defend us and our allies.
Only America can lead this war, and that leadership means being willing to devote whatever resources are required to win — even boots on the ground.
Get it? There’s two options: one is doing what I want, war, and the other is the “minimum.” The other is weak. What I want is ‘safe,’ anything else is unsafe.
We only have two choices America, war or weakness.
I’ve seen similar things echoed across the Internet in several forums.
Again, notice the two options. In this case they’re 1) do nothing, like a sheep, or 2) arm yourself for war.
Now you can point out the propaganda tactics but this type of response tends to fit into the “weak” category. Especially since this is such an emotional issue and people want to act. People feel like they need to do something.
What you want to do is suggest a strong action that is morally better than petty vindictive retaliation.
Here’s the position I’m taking:
Imagine if after 9/11, we had a president who said, “We’re going to be free from oil dependence in 20 years.”
Instead, we started two wars.
I’m sure there’s other good answers as well but I decided in this particular forum I was going to try to get folks to fight with me for energy independence.
One person didn’t like it.
Any time someone says “America wants …” it means they want. Inevitably, in any political conversation, conservatives fall back on the market vs. government. Once again, one is good, the other is evil.
I’m ok with that. The way to deal with this type of argument is to, once again, break down the either/or propaganda.
Markets are things we create. They don’t exist in the wild. We create them and we can create them any way we want.
One role they’ve played in the past has been to nurture technologies until markets emerge and mature.
Here, I do two things. I make him take some responsibility for his position. It’s not Americans. It’s him. The reason for doing this is that people tend to take more responsible positions if they have to own them.
I also demonstrate how most people do want renewable energy. Then, I simply ask him what he has against alternative energy.
He admits he doesn’t have anything against it. Then he leans on “markets” again. The “market” argument is also another way of saying, I don’t like it without having to take any kind of immoral personal position.
Other ways of not taking responsibility include: God doesn’t want it. Americans don’t want it. Or, let’s let the market decide.
In every example, people put their decision off on something or someone else. When you have to rely on an outside authority, it’s a good sign that the position is actually very weak
I press my case and, in the process, explain how we make these decisions democratically. I also explain that who really cares about veterans are people. Not markets.
To anyone watching, his position is starting to look ridiculous. Note, however, that I never call him stupid or ridiculous. I just explain what I believe is a better position.
Because he has such a weak position, he calls me “liberal.” I’m OK with that and admit that he’s right. By liberal though, I’m not going to accept his definition. When I say I’m liberal, it means I’m going to say what I mean and stand by it.
I’m not going to try to pretend to be something I’m not in order to convince someone. I don’t message. I say what I believe. You’d be surprised how strong the words “I believe ...” are.
Because I took such a strong moral position at the start, a much stronger moral position about what to do in response to the attacks, I kept coming back to this position.
What conservatives are taught is that if they are in a weak moral position, they want to switch to another argument where they can look moral.
Don’t let them. Keep coming back to your position.
I also took away his ability to call me “liberal” by standing my ground on what I believe. Yeah, I’m liberal. So?
Liberals didn’t start $1 trillion wars. Liberals didn’t crash the economy.
Did I win this guy over?
Nah. I recognize it’s not possible so it’s not even a goal. However, in his little Facebook group, there’s 400 other people. I’ve become friends with several of them. One of them even quit his position as one of the admins.
If you can manage to keep your cool, talk to people as people, and show them different alternatives than the “good” and “bad” choices being presented, you can break through the propaganda.
It’s not easy though. What we really need, in my opinion, is for this to happen on a larger scale in the media.
Another quick example
Another friend of mine wrote me about a veteran he knew talking about how we should fund veterans and not refugees.
Since I’d just seen Butterfly above say something similar, I wondered if some kind of propaganda was making the rounds.
It didn’t take long to find this …
Notice it’s using the same approach.
Present two alternatives as if they’re the only alternatives and make one good and the other bad.
Veterans or Syrian “rebels”? You choose.
The interesting thing about this meme is that the only time I’ve ever seen Republicans care about veterans is when they’re arguing for something else (like war!) or trying to get elected. Otherwise, they’re cutting funding for veterans.
Because guess what? Veterans worked for the government. Remember that thing that Republicans hate to fund?
Saying this, however, doesn’t help you so much. What you want to do is break down the binary. Why is it veterans vs. refugees?
Why can’t we do both?
I mean it’s not a matter of money. Republicans want to start another holy war. The last one cost us $1 trillion. They don’t seem worried about the money.
Why not help veterans instead of starting another war?
The original meme is trying to make it look like you’re either for veterans or for terrorists. This is ridiculous.
Pointing this out directly, however, is ineffective. So I flipped it. Why not spend the $1 trillion they want to spend on the next war on veterans?
Are there really liberals and conservatives?
In my opinion, there aren’t.
Conservative vs. liberal was simply one of the first ways that propagandists figured out how to divide people so the side they wanted to win looked “good” and moral and the other side looked “bad” and immoral.
Of course I recognize the reality of the situation and understand that many people identify as either liberal or conservative.
I feel it’s important to remember that most people are either both or neither but there’s a strong tendency for conversations to follow the propaganda. There’s a strong tendency to take the bait and argue a “side.”
For instance, there’s a strong tendency to choose refugees. Or to choose to not kill baby Hitler and risk seeming immoral.
When this happens, conversations tend to break down along the all-to-familiar “You’re liberal” vs. “You’re stupid” faults. For example, I think conservatives would see themselves as killing baby Hitler and see liberals as too weak to kill baby Hitler.
If you can propose something even more moral, the propaganda breaks down.
Let’s go back in time and re-write the treaty of Versailles.
And for the future, let’s break our energy dependence on Arab oil. Imagine if we’d of spent $1 trillion on new energy technology?
Instead of fighting another $1 trillion war, I’d rather fight to be free from energy dependence. I’d be happy to spend some of that money on veterans and the homeless too.