Propaganda for Peace PDF

# Propaganda for Peace ## Memes, Mass Moralizing, and a World Free of Nuclear Weapons **Theodore G. Dedon** Jacques Ellul, a French Christian anarchist, said, "The individual who burns with desire for action but does not know what to do is a common type in our society. He wants to act for the sak...

# Propaganda for Peace ## Memes, Mass Moralizing, and a World Free of Nuclear Weapons **Theodore G. Dedon** Jacques Ellul, a French Christian anarchist, said, "The individual who burns with desire for action but does not know what to do is a common type in our society. He wants to act for the sake of justice, peace, progress, but does not know how. If propaganda can show him this 'how' then it has won the game; action will surely follow."¹ Yet the word "propaganda" is often met with suspicion. It may conjure up pictures of real or imaginary state power, such as the Soviet Union, or the stories of George Orwell. Propaganda means, etymologically and neutrally, to spread about, to broadcast a message. The first official usage of the term for political purposes was in 1624 when Pope Urban VIII established the Pontificio Collegio Urbano de Propaganda Fide (Pontifical College for the Propagation of the Faith). Where indeed the institution was concerned with safeguarding correct doctrine and right thinking, the premise rested on the necessity for ensuring the quality and consistency of a message. It was, to borrow a phrase from Phil Hopkins, an early example of "mass moralizing" whereby marketing and storytelling intersect with each other.² Moral storytelling sustains worldviews. Since the origins of this style of moral propagandizing emerged, it has proved highly effective and has served as the foundation for rousing consciences throughout time. Today, we can use the lesson of intersecting moral storytelling with marketing to arouse the consciences of masses of people for the cause of total and complete nuclear disarmament. Following Pope Francis's condemnation of not only the use of nuclear weapons but also their possession, it is imperative that we discover new pathways to mass moralize and propagandize this message. ## Ellul's Argument Regarding Propaganda Ellul argued that propaganda was all-encompassing and inescapable. It was a feature of the technological society in which we all live. Whereas the traditional view of propaganda sees it as a tool of the state and delivered normally through the media, Ellul believed that propaganda is more pervasive. In the technological society information itself is omnipresent, and Ellul argued this before the internet and mass communication had developed to even a small fraction of what it is today. Therefore, the challenge of the modern day to actually influence beliefs is not to inundate people with facts and evidence but instead to appeal to their attitudes. "It is a fact that excessive data do not enlighten the reader or listener; they drown him. He cannot remember them all, or coordinate them, or understand them; if he does not want to risk losing his mind, he will merely draw a general picture from them. And the more facts a person is supplied the more simplistic the image."³ Beyond this, Ellul argues that people are "caught in a web of facts they have been given. They cannot even form a choice or a judgment in other areas or on other subjects. Thus the mechanisms of modern information induce a sort of hypnosis in the individual, who cannot get out of the field that has been laid out for him by the information."⁴ We are not, Ellul believes, free to choose. We are subjects to propaganda laid out before us often by interested parties but also artificially through the self-replication of the technological society. And "all individual passion leads to the suppression of all critical thought with regard to the object of that passion."⁵ In effect, according to his argument, the game is not to educate-it is to inundate and manipulate. And thus, it is the argument of this essay that those committed to nuclear disarmament, especially those who are in positions of influence, must learn to effectively embed the idea into every ideology permeating society. Whether or not we feel that propaganda is moral or valid is, to Ellul's framework, irrelevant. What is relevant is that propaganda is a fact, and whether we choose to use it for the goal of nuclear disarmament is up to us. ## Coudenhove-Kalergi's View on Propaganda and Nuclear Disarmament Someone who took this notion seriously in 1925, a generation before Ellul, was Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi. In his book Practical Idealism he argued that the world is primarily moved by a mixture of material conditions and ideas. Practical idealism, against practical materialism, is recognizing that principles beyond pleasure and pain are fundamental to the state of world affairs. Therefore, he believed that propaganda is necessary in ordering the world toward a desirable outcome. Ideas are shaped by material conditions, and material conditions require propaganda to change, he believed. Writing from Austria at the time of Nazi ascension, Coudenhove-Kalergi argued that there needed to be sustained efforts not only to "promote the peace idea," but also to produce peace propaganda. This, he says, is to make sure that the peace idea can win against all others. "Peace propaganda alone is incapable of preventing the threat of imminent war...; peace policy alone is incapable of securing permanent peace," and what is needed is "complete disarmament, [that will be] only possible after the victory of the peace idea"" "[Peace] propaganda is directed against war instincts," he says, and this is directed strictly against war interests." Nuclear war was not even a possibility when he wrote about this. Responding to the devastation of World War I and the failure of the League of Nations to stop the rise of Nazism in Europe, Coudenbove-Kalergi believed that another world war must never occur. It was through the imagination and human conscience that we could effectively change the trajectory, achieved through peace propaganda: > Peace propaganda must also mobilize human imaginations against a future war. It has to educate the masses about the dangers and horrors that threaten them in case of war: about the new rays and gasses that can kill entire cities, about the threat of an extermination war, which would be directed less to the front, but to the rural areas; about the political and economic consequences of such a war for victors and the defeated. This propaganda must help weak human memory and weak human imagination: for if people had more imagination-there would be no more war. The will to live would be the strongest ally of [peace].⁸ How true this is today, and how true this is to the cause of nuclear disarmament. Propaganda therefore is not only an enemy of peace but is also the greatest potential weapon in stopping war, if only the very idea of peace could win the day, that is. All power to the imagination. ## Memes, Memeplexes, and the Meme Machine In internet parlance, the word "meme" has taken on the meaning as a stand-in for that which goes viral. Commonly, it is an image with a set of words overlaid usually indicating something either apparently or seemingly relatable. Memes are the funny cat pictures you are sent in your email, the references to the latest happenings with varying commentary, and political messages designed to provoke or inspire. All memes are symbols. And they are, in effect, a form of propaganda. Meme theory was pioneered originally by Richard Dawkins who, in The Selfish Gene, made the case that memes are units of information that, like genes, seek to self-replicate. A meme, unlike a biological gene, does not replicate for its fitness of purpose but instead repli-cates because it is advantageous to the passing on of its information. Dawkins, in The God Delusion, took this notion a step further. 10 He argued that while memes apparently self-replicate, so do the structures that capture and coordinate them. He calls these memeplexes. Most famously, he applied this theory to the study of religion, and for better or for worse, he argued that religions themselves are memeplexes. Christianity, for example, has a variety of memes. The meme of the virgin birth, the meme of the one true god, the meme of the immaculate conception, the meme of atonement, and the meme of salvation. All of these memes, Dawkins argues, are coordinated together through the greater memeplex that constitutes the Christian religion. Though he does not argue it as such in his text, this basic premise can be applied to any and all self-contained and coherent ideologies or social movements. Therefore, new social movements-such as the leftist movement for social justice and the right-wing movement for nationalist sovereignty are indeed memeplexes. They have various memes embedded within them and a coherent metastructure that coordinates them. Meme machines, which Dawkins describes humans as, produce and maintain memes in a sort of worldview and experiential maintenance. Memeplexes that make us into a meme machine in this way are things such as the "I" who "I am," as memeplexes are the big ideas, the worldviews, and the systems which are replicated. Nuclear disarmament, in this way, is merely one meme that can participate with a variety of memeplexes. By this logic, nuclear disarmament could be a meme without a memeplex. Whereas it may be tempting to assume nuclear disarmament is an antiwar meme or goal, this has proved increasingly untrue. When George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn wrote A World Free of Nuclear Weapons, they effectively changed the trajectory of the entire movement for nuclear disarmament. 11 These four, traditionally seen as proponents of the Cold War logic for the nuclear arms race, had a change of heart and mind. They saw it as imperative for global security to not only reduce nuclear arms possession but also eliminate their existence altogether. Their article, written in 2007, made it apparent that certain issues can make strange bedfellows. Whereas once it may have been an issue that only antiwar peace activists were champions of, nuclear disarmament was clearly made an issue free of ideology-therefore, a meme free of a memeplex. Humans, as meme machines, can spread these memes as long as they are found within memeplexes true to their experience. ## The Symbol for Peace It is not a well-known fact that the common symbol for peace was originally a symbol for nuclear disarmament. The international symbol for peace was designed by Gerald Holtom for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, based in Britain. The CND symbol, as it is known, was presented in February 1958 to the Direct Action Committee and accepted as a symbol for its march on Trafalgar Square in London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in April. The symbol is the superimposition of an "N" for nuclear and "D" for disarmament but also appears like a "V" for victory and has since been recognized generically as a universal symbol for peace. Popularized through the 1960s, the symbol can be seen embedded into virtually every political cause. Like the two-fingered "V" so famously used by Winston Churchill and later by Richard Nixon, the symbol effectively communicates the idea of peace. But since that time the CND symbol has become decoupled from the cause of nuclear disarmament. Therefore, it is a symbol with a meaning but not its original meaning. It is a meme in and of itself, but it has lost its original meme-plex. Thus, it is imperative to recouple the meme to its original meaning so that nuclear disarmament is an obvious and apparent desire with its very usage. The peace sign is a symbol for nuclear disarmament, and nuclear disarmament is a symbol for peace. Every good meme is a symbol, and every good symbol is a meme. Peace is a symbol-a meme-that can be embedded into every social movement regardless of its memeplex. On the one hand, the movement for social justice could appropriately take up the cause for nuclear disarmament and integral development on the grounds that it reduces national power differentials and increases our roles as stewards for the environment. And on the other hand, the movement for nation-alist sovereignty could take up the cause for nuclear disarmament on the grounds it eliminates the imperial check against nation-states and safeguards state sovereignty against such global militarism. Further, it could reasonably be assumed that nuclear disarmament, should it be global and in total, could be a meme grafted into normal, nonideological narratives wherein people are concerned with generic global insecurity and risk. It is, in other words, the kind of meme that operates as self-replicating for its own advantage regardless of its framework. It is, in general, a universal and actionable symbol for peace. ## Nuclear Disarmament as a Political Meme Today, it seems unclear if the popularizers of war will heed the words of Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn, and Perry; indeed, it seems unlikely. But that said, it seems highly likely or at least plausible that nuclear disarmament could reenter the conversation through other backdoor channels. While it is easy to criticize former president Donald Trump on many fronts, at least rhetorically-symbolically and mimetically-he pursued the conversation of total disarmament with North Korea. Angela Nagle's argu-ment on the rise of Trump asserted that central to his political campaign was the use of what she calls "meme warfare."12 The basic assumption is that through the spreading of memes, Trump was made into a candidate who was both relatable and funny. Further, it helped spread his politi-cal platform beyond the common channels for discourse-such as the mainstream news media-and made the internet the central location for political influence. The so-called meme war therefore was the effective political propaganda that, Nagle believes, propelled him to win in places often untouched by conservatives. Part of the postwin memetic influence of those who support Trump has been the assertion that he pursued a campaign of peace against those who seek greater nuclear armaments. This is of course contestable, but it is in effect a feature of the memeplex now existing for his supporters. Whereas the mainstream media criticized his efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, he was a committed man of peace, his supporters argued. 13 Though this is indeed debatable and not borne out by his geo-political strategy, the meme itself is embedded into their memeplex. If the meme of peace through nuclear disarmament can permeate the cul-ture war from the center right to the alt-right, could it not permeate all the others as well? ## The Impact of Memes on Activism It seems highly probable that nuclear disarmament is an issue paramount to virtually all social movements and general causes. Black Lives Matter could support nuclear disarmament because the usage and indeed development of nuclear technology would disproportionately hurt Black and brown peoples, as would most technologies of war. The March for Our Lives, the movement that seeks to condemn the ownership of semiautomatic assault rifles and the National Rifle Association, should support nuclear disarmament for the fact it is yet another threat on children's lives. Indeed, it has been central to the threat against not only millennial and Generation Z children but also children all around the world for several generations. Further, the remnants of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party should support nuclear disarmament, because in the former case it disrupts the profiteering of the military-industrial complex, and in the latter case it disrupts the expansion of military-state power contributing to a bloated government. Nuclear disarmament, by this logic, is a meme that can be subsumed into virtually all meme-plexes, and it should be positioned to do so. One example of how this could be achieved tangibly is that organizations committed to nuclear disarmament could propose sponsored social media from activists to reach their constituencies. This is a normative practice for advertisers and could certainly be applied to activism. Therefore, in conclusion, all who are primarily committed to global zero, to the disarmament of all nuclear weapons, should develop effective messaging strategies so this embedding can occur. ## Peace Is The Way, Peace Is The Message In 2015 a study done by Georgetown University's Center for Social Impact Communication examined the problem of slacktivism.14 Slack-tivists are those who are active through social media and nothing else. A common narrative about slacktivism is that it stops with the "like" and "share" buttons, but that is actually not true. Slacktivists are twice as likely to volunteer their time (30% vs. 15%) and to take part in a localized event. They are four times as likely to encourage others to contact political rep-resentatives (22% vs. 5%) as well as five times as likely to recruit others in their cause through petition (20% vs 4%). Further, they are equally as likely as non-social media promoters to donate money in support of such a cause (at 41%). This is particularly striking given what we are arguing here. If nuclear disarmament as a meme were to be embedded in every memeplex, would it not likely increase its exposure and support? If not already apparent, the point here is to dismiss purity tests with respect to single-cause issues. If nuclear disarmament is of paramount import and it is—then it should be ideally located in any cause or set of causes regardless of how we see the memeplex broadly. If, for example, individuals are active members of the movement for social justice yet see themselves in antagonism with the nationalist sovereignty movement, they should be very glad that each respectively supports nuclear dis-armament. This should occur regardless of how they feel about other memes in the memeplex such as abortion, state sovereignty, gun confis-cation, and policing. Pablo Barbera, a researcher on the effects of social media in politi-cal activism, determined that online discourse is largely rooted in "echo chambers of contrarian clubs."15 They are, in effect, extremist groups separated from one another. But in an earlier study, he determined sharing political messages via social media such as Facebook with in localized networks, can actually reduce extremism and open up pathways for dialogue. 16 The point to glean here is that should strategic propagandiz-ing of nuclear disarmament occur, should it be a meme embedded into every memeplex, political rivals may find common ground and indeed pursue peace. Peace is the way, and peace is the message. It could be a Russian message; it could be an American, Russian, or Chinese message; and it is already a Roman Catholic message. Because of this-the message of Pope Francis that even the possession of nuclear arms is to be condemned-we need to discover new pathways for propagating that conviction. It is my belief that this meme, the meme of nuclear disarmament, can fit into nearly every memeplex and do so comfortably and without concession. It can become thoroughly local and global. Doing so will arouse the conscience of people online through social media but also offline in real-life activism regardless of the social movement to which they belong. If successful, it should open up pathways for dialogue and, in turn, actionable political change. To do so will be difficult and will require that every institution and individual committed to global zero sees this as a game wherein political rivalry can be an advantage, not a disadvantage. Ronald Reagan, when speaking about Mikhail Gorbachev to a group of faith leaders, said that "we may hope that perestroika will be accompanied by a deeper restructuring, a metanoya [sic], a change in heart, and that glasnost, which means giving voice, will also let loose a new chorus of belief, singing praise to the God that gave us life."17 Let us propagate this message of faith so that nuclear disarma-ment can become a global fact. As it was once, nuclear disarmament must become the ultimate symbol of the peace idea. ## Notes 1. Jacques Ellul, *Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes* (New York: Vintage, 1973), 209. 2. Phil Hopkins, *Mass Moralizing: Marketing and Moral Storytelling* (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). 3. Ellul, *Propaganda*, 87. 4. Ellul. 5. Ellul, 170. 6. Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, *Practical Idealism: The Kalergi Plan to Destroy European Peoples*, 1st ed. (Omnia Veritas, 1925), 172. 7. Coudenhove-Kalergi, 173. 8. Coudenhove-Kalergi, 176. 9. Richard Dawkins, *The Selfish Gene* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 342. 10. Richard Dawkins, *The God Delusion* (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006). 11. George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," *Wall Street Journal*, January 4, 2007. 12. Angela Nagle, *Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right* (London: Zero Books, 2017). 13. This is especially apparent on Reddit's forum. r/The_Donald, a popular meme board, focused on promoting Trump and his administration. There are hundreds of similar memes. 14. Bridget Pooley, "Slacktivism at its Finest," Georgetown Center for Social Impact Communication, https://csic.georgetown.edu/magazine/slacktivism-at-its-finest/. 15. Pablo Barbera, Cristian Vaccari, Augusto Valeriani, Richard Bonneau, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua Tucker, "Of Echo Chambers and Contrarian Clubs: Exposure to Political Disagreement among German and Italian Users of Twitter," *Social Media + Society* 2, no. 3 (2016). 16. Pablo Barbera, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua Tucker, and Richard Bonneau, "Tweeting from Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber?" *Psychological Science* 26, no. 10 (2015): 1531-42. 17. Andrew Preston, *Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy* (New York: Random House, 2012), 599-600.