I spent a lot of time Behind The Iron Curtain in my younger days. So I recognize propaganda when I see it. (In my head, I hear the word pronounced with an East European accent: proh-pah-GHAN-dah.)
I was living in Warsaw in 1988 during a period of hyperinflation and political stress. Residents of Poland’s capital city queued up for toilet paper; satirical performance artists were “removed” from the street by milicja. But newspapers were plentiful. Since the press was controlled by the regime, the kiosks were fully stocked: Trybuna Ludu (The People’s Tribune, organ of the PZPR), Prawo i Życie (Law and Life), Panorama (no translation needed), Dziennik Polski (Polish Daily), and my local paper, Życie Warszawy (Warsaw Life). Historical front page headlines: “Leonid Brezhnev greets Wojciech Jaruzelski.” “At the meeting of the governmental Prezidium: evaluation of the implementation of development program for Kraków and the voivodship,” and a perennial favorite: “NATO - A Threat to Peace.” Actual news? You could tune your short-wave radio to the BBC or Radio Free Europe and find out what was happening in the rest of Europe. By the time I was living there, state newspapers didn’t even try to produce interesting propaganda. People bought the daily papers for sports scores and cinema times. The newspapers were boring and the people were cynical.
Party propaganda was more effective in the years after World War II. Poland was in a state of exhaustion and confusion. Its borders were redrawn by the war’s victors. Eastern territories were ceded to the USSR and Western areas were recovered from Germany. After the devastation of the war years, a weary population wanted to believe lies about progress, about the prosperity of peasants and workers, about the comity between Comrade Stalin and Comrade Beirut. Propagandists of the Polish United Workers Party presented a reality that the Party wanted people to believe was real. It wasn’t a fun reality but it was still better than German and Russian occupation. It was a vision of a kind of economic security — you had to work, but you couldn’t get laid off. Your factory ran its own holiday camp near a lake and you had a month off to go there with your family. Granted, the holiday cabins didn’t have indoor plumbing—but still—it was a month off. And your kids went to socialist summer camp so they were out of the house during July and August.
By the late 1980s, there was no more hope for the future in the socialist vision. It had lost whatever attraction it might once have had. And a few hundred miles away, West Berlin stood as a constant, colorful, vibrant example of fun, freedom, and shopping.
The Polish state-run press was great at printing lies—but it wasn’t that good at selling them. Luckily for the Party leaders, they didn’t have to use propaganda to shape public opinion—they had power.
I’ve been reflecting on Eastern European history and my personal experiences watching the bloc crumble because of the relevance of these events to our current (US) political situation.
What are the similarities? Both Communist Polish leaders and right-wing commentators lie about what’s really happening in order to promote a fiction that serves the purposes of actors whose motive is power. The difference is that right-wing capitalists are a lot better at propaganda. (Or, advertising, or “messaging,” if you prefer.) Their slogans are catchier, their graphics are interactive, their marketing is targeted, and their appeals are finely honed to evoke emotion. In a contest between Polish Party leaders extolling the benefits of a five-year plan in grayscale, and a froggy meme jumping around on Facebook—Pepe wins hands-down.
The difference is Tucker Carlson’s lies about normal people—who go into politics because they’re interested in public policy—portray them as unbearable monsters. He conjures up a world in which these monsters are coming for you to destroy everything you hold dear. In Communist Poland, party leaders mouthed communist slogans that had lost their resonance decades before; Carlson, the frozen food heir, tells people lies that are convincing and effective.
Journalist Will Saletan, a former national correspondent for Slate, writes
We’re in a battle to save democracy, but the battleground isn’t values. It’s facts. We’re up against a party that spreads, condones, excuses, tolerates, and exploits lies—lies about our political process, and lies about an attempt to overthrow our government—in order to make Americans think that the party of authoritarianism is the party of democracy. And we’re in serious danger of losing.
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Notes:
Will Saletan, Lies are the building blocks of Trumpian authoritarianism
Just for fun, a classic:
Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.* Kindle.*
*Amazon Associate link to purchase the product. I receive a referral fee.