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War Propaganda: From Radio Technology to Video War Games

By Susan Cavin, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University Fascist propaganda acts as psychoanalysis in reverse. Teodor Adorno Historical Overview Around the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung discovered that the Unconscious was more truthful than the conscious mind. Freud used free association1 and Jung used the word association/reaction time test as methods to reach the Unconscious.2 Around World War I, police and criminal lawyers were the first to apply Freud and Jungs theories of the Unconscious to lie detector tests in a court of law. During WWI, Hugo Muensterbergs experiments at Harvard Laboratory suggested that military intelligence use the Unconscious to test the veracity of POW interrogations. 3 In the 1930s run-up to World War II, fascist agitators discovered another use for Freuds theory of the Unconscious at the same time radio was overtaking print media. Frankfurt School sociologist Teodor Adorno argued that fascist agitators mass manipulated the Unconscious of millions to grab power in Germany.4 Psychologist Ernst Simmel described how German fascists mixed Freud with radio propaganda into a flammable psychological cocktail that regressed an entire country. 5 As radio war propaganda overtook print propaganda in the 1930s; film and television overtook radio in the 1950s, so too the interactive Internet is fast overtaking passive television at the turn of the 21st century. Newspapers were to World War I what

radio was to World War II, 6 what television was to the Vietnam War, and Internet is to the Iraqi War. The invention and invasion of a new communications technology is first regarded by the public as magic. The newest magic does not immediately discontinue the use of older, tried and true media technologies. Even today, print media, radio, film, and television are still not obsolete as propaganda, even though the Internet is the latest magic. Once a virgin communications technology hardware and software has been initiated and broken in as war propaganda, it will be re-cycled again and again in the next wars, even if a new magic comes along. 7 Since radio was the most advanced communications technology in the 1940s, it became the most sophisticated conduit for both Allied and Axis psychological warfare. However, radio had many other military intelligence functions in WW II. Radios used by Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) Secret Intelligence agents told Allied airplanes when and where to bomb and drop much needed supplies behind enemy lines; the German order of battle, enemy troop movements, and the location of battle staging grounds. OSS radio operators and people who harbored them risked torture, death or the concentration camp if a radio transmitter was detected in their possession or on their premises.8 Radio operators were the most highly prized technological wizards of W.W. II espionage as computer hackers are today. 9

Revisiting the fabled radio techniques pioneered by Hitlers Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels illuminates the shocking similarity between U.S. right wing talk radio10 shows today and 1940s German radio. O.S.S. analyses of fascist talk radio noted the power of constant repetition of a simple theme.11 Goebbels taught that even a

lie could become believable if it were repeated often enough over the radio.

One

wonders if the Rush Limbaugh-Karl Rove architects of the American Election 2004 radio-television John Kerry flip-flops political ads 12 recycled Goebbels talk radio on the hunch that most of the WW II generation were dead or dying and the rest of Americans forgot their history and geography anyway! At this juncture, it is critical to travel back to WW II when Switzerland was the only country in Europe to keep her lights on at night, when turning on the crackle of BBC radio was a radio crime punishable by Gestapo torture.

O.S.S. Analysis of German Radio in WW II


Ernst Simmel, Hans Speier and Ernst Kris were refugee intellectuals who fled the Nazis and came to the New School for Social Research in New York where they did radio research for the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) and the Office of War Information (OWI).13 O.S.S. later became CIA; O.W.I. became Voice of America. Adorno worked on Paul Lazarsfelds Princeton Radio Project which also consulted with OWI. Austrian psychologist Ernst Kris was Erik Eriksons art teacher at the University of Vienna.
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Kris co-authored the OSS Official Study of Hitlers Mind

with Walter Langer and Chief OSS psychologist Henry Murray in 1943. Before that in 1941, Kris teamed up with German sociologist Hans Speier 15 at the New School, and wrote German Radio Propaganda Report on Home Broadcasts During the War 1941-44 for O.S.S. 16 Kris and Speier compared "Radio Warfare in W.W. II to newspaper battles in WW I, arguing that radio technology helped save democracy because the Nazis could not completely control radio as they could newspapers:
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"Had the Nazis ruled Germany in 1914, when radio did not exist as a means of mass communication, their monopoly of news could have been complete.for now the radio has inadvertently returned to the individual a bit of the liberty taken from him by the totalitarian government and has punctured the monopoly of information upon which the Nazis relied.17

The Ether Wall has no frontiers!


By 1933, however, Nazis propagandists had figured out how to use radio to create what Adorno called the atmosphere of the pogrom 18 on what Talcott Parsons called anomic crowds with high levels of free floating aggression. 19 Nazi radio was five years ahead of Orson Welles October 1, 1938 arty radio experiment: Invasion (of rural New Jersey) from Mars!20 Welless dramatic reading of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds panicked the public and proved the power of radio rumors in the United States, something Nazi Germany already knew. Herta Herzog, wife of Paul Lazarsfeld, Director of the Princeton Radio Project, analyzed Orson Welles Martian radio panic in New Jersey. Herzog found that 25% of the 6 million listeners that night thought it was real, despite repeated and clear statements that the show was fictional. Those who panicked did not think that men from Mars had invaded; they actually thought Germans had invaded America! 21 Kris and Speiers wrote: The Nazis realized the potential danger of the radio shortly after their accession to power. 'If you imagine the suggestive influence which in times of excitement may be exercised on any crowd, you will realize in what terrible danger the millions of German people are living, encircled and oppressed by enemies; the full force and the full impact of a criminal propaganda of lies may suddenly invade us.'22 This discovery of the mass panic effect of radio rumors on anomic, insecure crowds 23 made sociology and mass psychology valuable as military intelligence during WW II. Sociologists Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, and Kris-Speiers wrote about

radio rumors and fascist propaganda for U.S.military intelligence. Merton published a book called Mass Persuasion in 1946. 24 Parsons even had a radio show himself where he tried to counter Nazi radio propaganda on WRUL-Boston in 1942.25 Kris and Speiers decoded the day-to-day of Nazi Radio, which broadcast : "On 3 December 1942, 'The ether has no frontiers! It is known that a few radio criminals are sufficient to poison entire regions with rumors." 26

Funkspiel (Radio Game): Nazi Radio Listening Bans & Radio Criminals
Nazi Germany countered the democracy of BBC radio and Allied black radio propaganda with legal codes of radio crimes, Listening Bans, and Gestapo Radio Detection Units called Funkspiel . 27 Nosey neighbors were scolded over the radio to denounce radio criminals. Ernst Simmel thought this tactic emotionally isolated every individual in Germany. 28 Kris and Speier reckoned that: "When war broke out, the BBC became the most dangerous enemy of Nazi propaganda. BBC broadcasts from London reach the German listener on a variety of medium, long, and short wave lengths."
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The first line of Nazi defense was to jam the BBC broadcasts. "The second measure of defense is the listening ban, which makes listening to foreign broadcasts a criminal offense, punishable by jail, hard labor, or death. The lone black-listener is less guilty than the one who listens in the presence of his wife--or worse, his maid. The death sentence is for those who meet to listen as a group, or who communicate what they have heard Threats are constantly mixed with persuasion. Listening to foreign broadcasts is said to be dangerous in that it corrodes the mind."30 The worst radio criminal in the Nazi radio game was the radio operator who transmitted messages back to the enemy 31 as today the computer hacker is the most dangerous techno-criminal.
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Goebbelss Radio Puppet Show


Fascist radio propaganda was aimed at the average German man on the street, Herr Schmidt. Kris & Speier noted: "The Nazi radio invites the German people to a puppet show. The hero is the self, the villain is the enemy, and the rest is chorus...In times of victory, the self is reduced to Hitler the Party, and the German soldier." 32 Goebbels was the "stage manager" for Nazi radio who manipulated the collective self.33 Adorno cautioned that Goebbels was not that brilliant, but instead simply saw the worst in everyman, and through compulsive repetition reproduced it over the radio, petrifying the status quo. Adorno wrote: Since it would be impossible for fascism to win the masses through rational arguments, its propaganda must be oriented psychologically, and has to mobilize irrational, unconscious, regressive processes. This task is facilitated by the frame of mind of all those strata of the population who suffer from senseless frustrations and therefore develop a stunted, irrational mentality .For if the status quo is taken for granted and petrified, a much greater effort is needed to see through it than to adjust to it... 34 Goebbels used a radio composite image of the German people to hide the reality of war from the German people. Kris and Speier wrote: " the main problem of the Nazi propagandist is to prevent the German from knowing himself... the individual is meant to disappear. to merge with the collective self The propagandist hopes that the listener , plain Herr Schmidt, will believe what he is told about 'the German people,' and begin to think, feel, and behave as the propagandist says he does. It is not too unreasonable of Goebbels to expect the listener to believe what propaganda tells him about the enemy in distant lands, about the absent soldier, or the remote leader. ... If Herr Schmidt believed in it, nobody would object, for he was then of no further trouble to Dr. Goebbels."35 Goebbels was a bit like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain using technology and a deep radio father voice to distract his own people with a powerful artificial father figure, who didnt really exist.

Fascist propaganda acts as Psychoanalysis in reverse


To summarize, Kris and Speier focused on the psychology between radio speakers and listeners on Hitler/Goebbels talk radio. Ernst Simmel focused on how to

break Hitlers radio (father) transference using VOA short-wave psychotherapy. Adorno focused on the fascist agitator between the leader and the crowd, the Goebbels, the Karl Roves. Just after WWI , Freud wrote Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego in response to Gustave LeBons theory of crowd psychology.
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LeBon theorized that the

leader who hypnotized crowds was a fanatical believer with strong faith and an unswerving will. (Note: this is the role Bush performs.) (See Chart 1, Psychology of Fascist Propaganda next page.)

Psychology of Fascist Propaganda


Theorist War
LEBON WWI

Chart 1.

Fanatical Obliterated, Omnipotent Hypnosis Believer, Merged w/ Invincible Strong Faith Group Contagious & Will Suggestible FREUD WWI Father Replaces Group Induce Transference Individual Unconscious Artificial Libido Bond Narcissism Replaces Infantile Focus on w/ Leader Individual Regression; Leader Identification Conscious ForgetReality ADORNO WWII Little Big Phoniness Atmosphere Rigid Man; Pretends of Pogrom, Monotonous Focus on Sleep,Infantile Merciless, Speeches, Leader-Name Regression Ruthless Compulsive Personification Bully Repetitions, Abolish Democracy Scarce Ideas Avoid Issues
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Leader

Individual

Group

Agitator

_____________________________________________________________ KRIS & WWII Hero=Self Herr Schmidt Interprets Talk Radio SPEIER Atlas believes lies abt. News, PuppetShow Enemy in faraway tells indiv. martialmusic lands; if fearful, how to Ridicule, Neurotic/coward feel Scapegoat, mix terror w/persuasion _____________________________________________________________ SIMMEL WWII Strong Man Dread Blocks Induce Hecklers =Parasitic Rational, Crowd shift issue Super-Ego 1 Lost Panic; to personal Replaces Unarmed fearful matters to Individual Individual children stir emotion, Conscience Attacked by Long for no concern Armed Gang; Strong Man w/ content; Domestic slave to fix it say foolish Daydreams he things Rules world
LeBon found that the individual was obliterated by and merged with the crowd who together felt omnipotent, invincible, suggestible. Crowd behavior was contagious. 37 In Group Psychology, Freud concluded that the bond between leader and followers was libidinal and unconscious, and did not work in the Army or Church if the erotic tie became conscious. In this process, the individual lost his/her critical thought and sense of responsibility (SuperEgo). In return, the individual was rewarded with almost a drunken high from merging with the crowds unconscious. Freud likens this group merge to a

holiday festival for the Id, a Mardi Gras for the unconscious. Its pleasurable, erotic and unconscious. Examples of this unconscious crowd high abound today among

fundamentalist Christian, Jewish and Muslim crowds at holy shrines; most recently the crowds in St. Peters Square around the Popes death. Ernst Simmel wrote: chronic unemployment made the Germans hopeless Absolute helplessnessmakes children out of adults, who, in their despair long for the guidance of a strong man, alike to a fatherPanic also drives men together in masses. Since they do not know what to do, they long to submerge into a mass where all responsibility will be taken away from them as individuals and left to the mass as such and its leader.38 Simmel and Adorno applied Freuds WW I group psychology theory to WW II. Adorno wrote: The content of Freuds theory, the replacement of individual narcissism by identification with leader images, points in the direction of what might be called the appropriation of mass psychology by the oppressors. 39 If Marx spoke of the exploitation of the proletariats physical labor; Adorno now spoke of the appropriation of the mass psychology of the working class. In Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda, Adorno wrote: Freud defines the realm of psychology by the supremacy of the unconscious and postulates that what is id should become ego. Under Freudian psychoanalysis, the Unconscious should become more conscious. Adorno wrote: fascism targets the

unconscious by social control instead of making the subjects conscious of their unconscious.40 The goal of fascist propaganda is the abolition of democracy; the

method is to reduce consciousness and increase the realm of the political Unconscious. Adorno argued that fascist propaganda could secretly manipulate the Unconscious of an entire country. Ernst Simmel implies that the infantilization of the German people was

partly done by radio transference.41

Adorno thought that mass manipulation of the unconscious was indispensable to fascism. What happens when masses are caught by fascist propaganda is the artificial regression described by Freud42 Mass infantile regression occurs when the leader become father and the masses become his dependent children. However, Adorno found leaders and the supposed frenzy and hysteria of their followers was categorized by phoniness.
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(Its no accident that Laura Bush

and Nancy Reagans adoring smiles at The Leader have been called phony.) Followers do not completely believe in the leader. They do not really identify themselves with him but act this identification, perform their own enthusiasm, and thus participate in their leaders performance. If they would stop to reason for a second, the whole performance would go to pieces, and they would be left to panic. Adorno then likens fascist manipulation to an artificial collective hypnosis where people know they are not asleep, those who keep their eyes shut though they are no longer asleep. 44

Ernst Simmels Short- Wave Psychotherapy


Psychoanalyst Ernst Simmel wrote a fascinating paper on short-wave psychotherapy at the request of OSS psychologist Walter Langer, author of the Official OSS Psychoanalysis of Hitlers Mind.45 Simmel wrote: The essential aim of psychological pre-attacks is to create panical conditions, paralyzing effective defense.It is smuggled into other radio programs. But it affects the listeners mental condition the more the less he is aware of these sendings 46 Propaganda works best when people are unconscious of it. The Hitler propaganda has purposefully created a panic state of mind of the German people in order to drive it into and keep it in a mental condition of infantile

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regression. By usurping the role of a collective super-ego, Hitlerfunctioning as a parasitic super-egohas succeeded in preventing his followers from recognizing reality, or has even succeeded in making them deny reality. German people are kept on the stage of infants, i.e., as slaves at home by being permitted to indulge in day dreams of being grown ups, who are superior and powerful enough to conquer the world abroad47 (This has happened to the American people, since 9-11.) Simmel made an important point about how Freedom of Speech has been abolished in GermanyThe prohibition to speak, i.e., to verbalize feelings, must have led retroactively to an inhibition to think48

Professional Hecklers
According to Simmel, Hilter wasnt sure all people in Germany were really in a panic, so he used a terror technique to put them into a panic: the cowardly attack of several armed individuals on a single, unarmed one. 49 Nazis used professional hecklers to avoid the issue, by starting an emotional uproar to keep people from logical thinking. 50 That is the reason why they say foolish things which they do not believe themselves. They are not concerned with the content of our controversies. They are merely interested in bringing about certain psychological effects within the audience.51

Simmels CURE for Fascist Propaganda


To conclude our discussion of WW II radio propaganda, Simmels solution was simple: The best way of making an individual or a group of individuals immune against the effects of propaganda isto make them conscious of the psychological technique employed. Nazi propaganda aims directly at the emotional forces of the irrational unconscious and tries to exclude any critical interference of the super-ego, either by

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paralyzing it (through dread) or by bribing it (by narcissistic premiums). We are able to counteract this technique by diverting the attention of the individual from the content of propaganda messages to the mechanism of their presentation. In this way, we block an immediate emotional reaction.52

New Theory
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I theorize that : WW II radio heckler techniques have been recycled and smuggled into US neo-con talk radio and television shows since 9-11 (on Rupert Murdochs Fox 5 and fundamentalist Christian radio- TV networks) to reduce public criticism of Bushs oil wars.

What was first learned about the mass psychology of radio transference in WW II was later recycled as television-father transference first by televangelists, and more recently, by mass televised spectacles of Pope John Pauls and Ronald Reagans funerals.

INTERNET-VIDEO TERRORISM
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Internet Terror and Terrorist Websites can only be next for mass spectacles. Increasingly, the Internet is already used as a propaganda conduit by evangelical terrorists using Internet Webcam beheadings.

Previously, political terrorists had ambushed live television coverage for mass spectacles of the Munich Olympics, airplane hostage hijackings, and the Iran Hostage Crisis in the seventies.
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By the 1990s, video terrorism found smaller worlds to stage in the Big Brother world of video security. Parking garage ( b& w) videotapes of car as bomb/ white rental mini-van as bomb later replayed on television repetitively (VCR instant replay) became mass televised spectacle in the dragnet for World

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Trade Center I suspects (WTC I). Car as bomb is the terror du jour in the Middle East. TV is now almost used as VCR on repetitive replay by both terrorists and police. The repetitive replay (hundreds to thousands of times) of car bombs is mind altering for the passive public. Since 2001, ATM bank videotapes of banking customer Mohammed Atta were replayed hundreds of times repetitively by TV news stations. (Why? He was already dead.) (See Chart 2 on the next page)

Chart 2. Theory of Communications Technology & War

Propaganda

Communications

War
WW I

Technology
Newspapers, pamphlets, fliers Print Media Radio Film/Newsreels Television Mass Media Circus Spectacles Internet - email -cell phones Vietnam

Propaganda Artist/Technician
Writers/Poster Artists Printers,graphic arts Photographers Orators/Actors/Announcers radio operators actors/ cinematographers TV/Actors Videographers airplane hijackers hostage-terrorist as actor Hacker Phone Freaks surveillance cameraman

Academic Discipline
Journalism Literature History Social Science Sociology/Econ Anthro/Psych

WW II

TV Media Studies Video/FilmStudies Mass Media Mass Psychology

Hostage Terrorism Iran Munich Olympics Bosnia

Computer Science Elec. Engineering Aerial videography Geographers NASASpace Science

BomberPilotVideos Gulf War I GSP, satellite Pictures Web Wargames

3D gamers

Computer Programmers
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Recruitment Terrorist VCR

americasarmy.com* WTC I & II 9/11 Iraqi War

WebCam Terrorist Internet

Animation/ Designers InfoTechnology Digital Artists car as bomb Arabic plane as bomb Engineering human as bomb suicide bombers Transportation Studies beheading videos Religion Theology

*Source: Seth Schiesel, On Maneuvers With the Armys Game Squad, Creators of the Pentagons online hit (and recruiting tool) get a taste of military life, New York Times, Circuits, February 17, 2005, p. G-1 & G-7.

Repetitive exploding videos of human as bomb (suicide bombers) in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict are powerful propaganda to demoralize Israeli civilians. But shaky cam videotapes of plane as bomb revolutionalized Terrorist VCR and mass spectacle. With WTC II, life began to imitate disaster movies. Amateur videos of 9-11 were replayed as mass televised spectacle hundreds of times on New York City TV alone, not counting the world. Child psychologists had to beg TV stations to stop retraumatizing NYC children. This was like free advertising for Osama Recruitment video posters, not to mention the wildly popular Osama VCR messages on Al Jazeera.

Although print, radio and television are always useful, they have been eclipsed by the latest technology of war propaganda in the Iraqi War: Internet websiteswireless laptops-digital cameras-cell phones-satellite phones-Global Satellite Positioning devices, CD-ROMS , DVDs, webcams, and videotapes messages from terrorists to the mass passive, panicked public.

The violent twentieth century moved from hot to nuclear war to cold war to virtual nuclear war games. In only five years, the twenty first century has moved from Terrorist VCR of 911 on instant replay, to live CNN specials of aerial
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bombings of civilian Baghdad, Terrorist Webcam Internet beheadings, digital photos of U.S. soldiers torturing POWs, and U.S. Army videogame war on the Internet.

VIDEO WAR GAMES


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In 1999, the U.S. Army conceived the idea of using a video war game to help solve a long-term dip in recruitment since Gulf War I.53 In 2000, Army Magazine claimed to be only six months away from the 1st Digital

War Division based at Fort Hood Texas. 54 The Armys first very own video game was released in July 2002.55 By October 2002, in only 3 months, the Army had registered 950,000 hits to the game website (americasarmy.com). 56 Recruiting young male video addicts, looking for the newest free game on the Internet seems to be a perfect fit for the U.S. Armys first Digital War Division at Fort Hood, Texas. Although video games were invented in the seventies,57 these developments reveal that video games have been baptised as war propaganda, and as a military recruitment and training tool at the turn of the twenty first century. (4 pages of color photos of Americasarmy video game)

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NOTES

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Peter Gay, Freud A Life For Our Time (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998). Ronald Hayman, Jung (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001). 3 Susan Cavin, The Oh So Social Science of Espionage, unpublished manuscript (forthcoming); Foreword by Henry Baldwin Hyde, O.S.S. Chief of French Secret Intelligence. 4 Teodor Adorno, Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader edited by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 118-137. The psychology of the masses has been taken over by their leaders and transformed into a means for their domination. The fascist agitator manipulates the psychology of the masses to get power. p. 135 5 Ernst Simmel, A Psychological Radio Offensive Against Germany From A Psychoanalytical Viewpoint, in Ernst Kris s papers at the New School University Fogelman Library. (Folder of the same title in Ernst Kris-Hans Speier Research Project Box 1, Fogelman Library, New School University courtesy of Reference Librarian Dr. Carmen Hendershott, April 2005), p. 28: It must be made known that Goebbels as well as Mussolini had carefully studied the doctrines of Freud .They misused his discoveries of the dynamic of the human mind for the purpose of creating artificially panic and hatred among the German population in order to keep it under the thumbs of their tyrannic rulers. 6 Ibid., pp. 88-91. See also Dieter Krohn on Kris and Speier, op. cit., pp. 137-138, who wrote:Hans Speier and the psychologist Ernst Kris supervised a major research project on the manipulative effectiveness of Goebbels's propaganda. Among the many studies done in this connection and published in book form as articles in various American periodicals, two books stand out in particular, a voluminous study entitled German Radio Propaganda, a glossary of Nazi Deutsch. Both convey a powerful impression of the militarization and irrationalization of thinking and language under the Nazis." (Dieter-Krohn, pp. 137138) 7 If some generations are more attached to the technologies of their youth, the propagandist must utilize all genres of technologies to reach the majority of all generations. 8 Interviews by Henry B. Hyde and Susan Cavin in France, July 1996 with O.S.S.French agents radio operator Mario Marret and Bernard Bermond; and O.S.S. sub-agents Madame Fernande Robert, Jean Naf Naf Nardeau, Yvonne Loisseau, and Kiki. All confirmed that radio operators were tortured by threat of death in occupied France and that OSS and OWI radio gave hope to the French Resistance. 9 David Johnston, Suspect in Loss of Nuclear Secrets Unlikely to Face Spying Charges, New York Times, June 15, 1999, p. 1. 10 Since World War II, talk radio has been used successfully by right wing Christian radio stations both in and outside the United States. 11 Kris and Speier, op. cit. See also Teodor Adorno, Freudian and Fascist Propaganda, op. cit. 12 For example, in Presidential Election 2004, the simple theme of John Kerry as a flip flopper was repeated hundreds, if not thousands of time across print, radio and tv ads and by right wing political commentators and guests on their radio and TV programs. At the Republican Convention in New York City, delegates raised large flip flops as agit prop just to remind television viewers that John Kerry was a flip flopper, in case they were too stupid to remember what everybody else in the country already knew. 13 O.W.I. later became Voice of America (VOA) radio. Neil McLaughlin, Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited, Sociological Theory, Vol. 14, No. 3, November 1996, pp. 241-261. 14 In Richard I. Evans' Dialogue with Erik Erikson, Erikson himself said: "Ernst Kris was one of my teachers in the Vienna Institute while he was curator of the Vienna Art Museum..." Evans, p. 82 It was probably Ernst Kris and Henry Murray who involved Erik Erikson in analyzing Hitlers radio speeches for COI in 1941. Kris probably also knew Paul Lazarsfeld and Herta Herzog from the University of Vienna.. Kris was a member of the Council for Democracy, founded in New York City August 1940, and its activist wing, the Committee for National Morale, along with Gordon Allport, Gregory Bateson. Hadley Cantril, Elmer Davis, George Gallup, Geoffrey Gorer, Kurt Lewin, Margaret Mead, Gardner Murphy, Henry A. Murray, and Robert Yerkes, according to Uta Gerhardt, Talcott Parsons An Intellectual Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 75. 15 Emigre intellectual Ernst Kris ("Country of Origin: Austria. Discipline/Profession: psychology") is listed as one of the "European Scholars Artists helped by the New School for Social Research between 1933 and 1945" along with Hans Speier, German sociologist in (Dieter Krohn, op. cit., p. 207; 209). This teaming of social scientists from different disciplines by O.S.S of Kris, a psychologist, with Speier, a sociologist, later served as a prototype for CIA teams today according to CIA psychologist Jerrold Post, Leaders and their followers in a dangerous world the psychology of political behavior (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004.) 16 Kris and Speier, op. cit. 17 Ibid., p. 88. Chapter IV. They could have easily prevented the opposition from buying neutral newspapers, as was still possible in 1918....Yet in a sense Nazi propagandists are worse off than were their imperial precursors This democratic aspect of radio is reminiscent of todays Internet. There is an anti-fascism element of the early Internet where people can freely communicate with each other. 18 Adorno, op. cit., p. 119.
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Talcott Parsons, Propaganda and Social Control, November 1942 in Uta Gerhardt, Talcott Parsons and National Socialism; see also Uta Gerhardt, Talcott Parsons An Intellectual Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 100-104. 20 Hadley Cantril with the assistance of Hazel Gaudet and Herta Herzog, Invasion from Mars; a study in the psychology of panic(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1940; reprinted in1982) ; See also Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during WW II (Berkeley: University of California, 2002). Horten found that by 1938, 90% of American families owned at least 1 radio and listened on average 4 hours per day. 21 Cantril, Gaudet & Herzog, op. cit. Other relevant works by Herta Herzog are: Survey of research on childrens radio listening (New York: Columbia Unviersity Office of Radio Research, 1941. 22 Ibid., p. 88. 23 Norman Maier called this insecure crowd-- behavior without a goal in Frustration: The Study of Behavior Without a Goal (Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1949). See also Talcott Parsons writings on the widespread anomie engendered by the rapid social change of modernization and industrialization in Uta Gerhardts (ed) Talcott Parsons on National Socialism (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993). 24 Robert Merton with Marjorie Fiske and Alberta Curtis, Mass Persuasion (New York: Harper & Brothers,1946). 25 Talcott Parsons, National Socialism and the German People, Radio Broadcast, WRUL, May 21, 1942; in Uta Gerhardt, op. cit., p. 97 26 See also Childs, Harwood L. and Whitton, John B. Propaganda by Short Wave. Princeton, 1942. 27 p. 35 Barbie book:"...Funkspiel meant the radio detection unit. 28 Ernst Simmel, op. cit., p. 24: Hitler poisoned all inter-human relationships within Germany itself by instilling into the minds of citizens the need of spying on one another. Hitler thus isolated every individual emotionally by inducing him to distrust his neighbor and to be afraid even of his friends. 29 Kris & Speier, op. cit., p. 89. At regular hours the Voice of America, an OWI transmission, is also broadcast from London. 30 Ibid., p. 90. Sentences imposed upon offenders are announced in the press and occasionally even on the radio when a special campaign of intimidation is going on. 31 One of the more famous OSS radio operators in Europe was Little Wally, originally discovered in a German POW camp was brought by Henry Hyde to Allen Dulles in Switzerland for Operation Sunrise. Little Wally transmitted messages from German General Wolf to Allen Dulles in Bern, who coordinated the North Italian surrender. Allen Dulles was credited for having saved the art treasures of Northern Italy by negotiating the Italian Surrender, because of Little Wallys extradordinary radio operator skills. In 1943 and 1944, in Lyon, France, Klaus Barbies Gestapo staged snap control raids of the Perrache train station looking for radio transmitting equipment in baggage. They almost captured OSS Penny Farthing agents Jacques de Rocquefort and radio operator Mario Marret, who abandoned their radio equipment in a suitcase to save themselves. O.S.S. Penny Farthing radio operator Mario Marret singlehandedly sent 226 radio messages back to Henry Hyde in Algiers on German troop movements. Marret (codenamed TOTO) was arrested for being an enemy radio operator and tortured for three days by Klaus Barbie at the Hotel Terminus (now Hotel Royale) on Place Bellcour in Lyon. For his radio crimes, Marret received a death sentence in Montluc Prison. Ironically, years later when Barbie was captured, Barbie was sent to Montluc during his trial as the Butcher of Lyon. Marret Marret ( TOTO) saved his own life by admiting to Klaus Barbie that he was not only an American agent, but such an important O.S.S. agent that he could even get a radio message to O.S.S. and receive an answer back from General Donovan himself over the BBC within a few days. Luckily, Hyde had enough of a relationship with Donovan to pull it off, and got permission from Donovan to send a message over BBC to save his top Penny Farthing agent, Mario Marret. 32 Kris and Speier, op. cit. p. 119-20. 33 Ibid., p. 167. Had Goebbels read Jung and bastardized Jung's idea of the collective unconscious for Nazi propaganda purposes? Or was it Kris and Speier who had read Jung?Herr "Schmidt is inescapably part and parcel of Volksgemeinschaft (national community), Reich, Germany. Their attributes are the only ones allowed to him. In order to have his personality recognized he must first surrender it to the collective self." Goebbels and Hess were the only minor leaders who could ever speak as a radio substitute voice for Hitler when he was detained on a mission. 34 Adorno in Arato, op. cit., p. 134. Note: This may explain why ultra-reactionary mass movements use the psychology of the masses to a much greater extent than do movements which show more faith in the masses. This is true in the fundamentalist Christian south today and Election 2004, when John Kerry rationally won the 3 debates, but emotionally lost the heart of the fundamentalist masses election. Adorno wrote: the secret of fascist propaganda is that it simply takes men for what they are: the true children of todays standardized mass culture. Fascist propaganda has only to reproduce the existent mentalityit need not induce changeand the compulsive repetition is one of its foremost characteristics. 35 Kris and Speier, op. cit., , p. 163-64. ....In times of victory, and as long as he can possibly help it in times of setbacks, the plain man or woman is non-existent on the German radio. Instead, we find a composite image derived in part from Nazi ideology On the radio, in times of victory, the Schmidts had no everyday life...They were at war, but war was either extraordinarily easy, or extraordinarily total....The German did not read books and like music; he had culture. He did not have a good time, but had enthusiasm, boundless and national The German people had no children; instead, they had a birthrate which was constantly rising.... See also p. 202: "Schmidt, the political being with social or class interests, whom
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Goebbels has so long been trying to deny, appears with dramatic suddenness during the period after Stalingrad. When, in the grim winter of 1941, his complaints seemed to disrupt the harmony of the colective self,....and during the air raids of 1942, Goebbels had always managed to make him quickly disappear. But in 1943 Schmidt and his interests were less easily conjured away. Goebbels no longer denies that people are afraid of the future; he denies, however, that this fear is political. Those who become frightened are jittery by nature. Frau Koehn-Behrens, who gives weekly advice on personal matters, explained in March 1943 that a person is fearful not because of the RAF, but because he is a neurotic coward. 36 Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) (New York: W.W. Norton, 1959). 37 Gustave LeBon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Kessinger (1896), 2003); see also Gustave LeBon, Psychology of the Great War: The First World War and Its Origins (Transaction, 1999); Gustave LeBon, Psychology of Socialism (Transaction, 1980). 38 Simmel, p. 23-24. Adorno , op. cit., pp. 135-136. Ibid., p. 136 Fascist propaganda exacerbates the paranoia of the masses made insecure by economic dislocation in modern society, while psychoanalysis tries to reduce the patients paranoia. 41 Simmel, op. cit. 42 Adorno, op. cit., p. 135. 43 Ibid., , p. 136-137. 44 Ibid., p. 137. 45 Simmel wrote this for Walter Langer, of the OSS Hitler Study, and his brother , Chief of R & A OSS William Langer. Simmel, op. cit., p. 12: To progress from these more abstract considerations to more concrete ones, let me first mention that I agree with Dr. Langers proposal to divided the broadcasts into two parts: 1. The short-range (Ibid., p. 13) attack,, carried on from day to day, and 2. The long-range campaign which (quoting Langer) must set itself a definite goal as well as frame the strategy and the tactics to be employed in using it. Simmel mentions Langer again in his epilogue, on p. 42: I have compiled my psychoanalytic views concerning a broadcasting offensive against Germany as a member of a committee appointed for this purpose by Dr. Walter C. Langer. This committee is also listed as the Donovan (sic) Committee referring to General Wild Bill Donovan, Director of O.S.S. Simmels paper is housed at the New School. in Ernst Kris Radio Project papers. 46 Ibid., p. 2. Simmel wrote : The ultimate aim, of course, of all the messages sent to the German population, is to make our airborne messages so pregnant with meaning and so stimulating See also Ibid., p. 18: where Simmel agreed with Langers idea: The psychotherapymust be actually carried out by long-range sendings. The short-range sendings should bea psychological preparation for, and a stimulation to, long-range sendingsthe long range sendings should be mentioned in every short-range broadcast. See also Ibid., p. 6: The American psychological offensive has as its aim not the tendency to demoralize a mentally wellintegrated population, but on the contrary to re-integrate the mental condition of a population already suffering from the demoralizing effects of a psychological offensive staged against them by their own leaders. Ibid., p. 21: The Germans must be taught that their national narcissism, which makes them believe themselves the master of the world, is nothing but an irrational daydreamIt is collective hyper-narcissim. Today, in the Iraqi War, the American people have switched places with the German people in WW II . 47 Ibid., p. 7. Hitler propaganda has succeeded in making the German people sick. Our endeavor must be to cure itthe planned broadcasting offensives has its specific tasks for psychoanalysts who are used to the task of introducing a process of maturation into the mind of mentally disintegrated individuals, and this by means of the spoken word only. 48 Ibid., p. 13: Simmel suggested that mentioning US defeats would give US radio more credibility. He also suggested that US broadcasts should cast the war as a war of immense length because : German psychological offenses are planned as preparations of long duration to assure success to military action which has to be as short as possible the Blitzkrieg. Ibid., p. 5. 49 Ibid., p. 8- 10. we have to take into consideration the infantile regressive state of mind of the average German citizen that state of mind based on his fixation on Hitler. See p. 24: Hitler keeps them on the level of fearful dependent children. He rules through the blind obedience of intimidated children. See p. 11: Hitler has been an extremely successful wild psychotherapist. He has brought about such a child-father relationship between himself and the German people.In his transference system, the father (dictator) keeps up the child (peoples ) belief in his omnipotence by misusing his superior physical strength. 50 Ibid., p. 27. 51 Ibid., p. 27-a.-b. This is assembly-strategyThis technique is always the same. Nazi speakers or Nazi hecklers shift the emphasis from the actual issue to personal matters in order to stir up emotions contrary to logical arguments. (This is reminiscent of Talk Radio and Fox 5TV political commentary today , e.g., Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, Bill OReilly. Like actors on cue, 2-3 hecklers gangbang 1 liberal who is trying to argue rationally, they jump him and turn it into a personal free for all. You cant hear what theyre saying, but it makes you nervous watching it. In this way, almost no one can criticize Bushs war on TV.
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Ibid., p. 27: See also p. 18: What we aim by our long range broadcastsis to help the German people to mature, i.e., to give up its infantile regression by dissolving its irrational transference-ties to Hitler. To this end, we must prove that Hitler is far from being capable of being a real father. He does not love anyone because he is not capable of loving at all. Simmels program was to establish a radio transference and (Short-wave psychotherapy) based on psychoanalytic principles. See also p. 9: our short-wave sendings must represent us as powerful grown-ups to the childthe German people. See also p. 9: We have to establish a transference to the broadcaster representing the Voice of America. 53 Col. E. Casey Wardynski, Americas Army Project Director, conceived the idea for the game in 1999 when recruitment hit a 30 year low. www.americasarmy.com. Recruitment problems have intensified during the Iraqi War as the death toll rises. See also Damien Cave, Army to Spend Day Retraining Recruiters Amid Reports of Abuse, New York Times, 5/12/05; see also Damien Cave, Uncle Sam Wants You, But He Needs to Adapt, New York Times, 5/8/05. 54 Robert Levine, A Video Match: The Nintendogs vs Gangs, Thugs & Wars, New York Times, 5/23/05; see also Robert Levine, A Spartan Warrior with a Sense of Humor, New York Times, 3/21/05. 55 Seth Schiesel, On Maneuvers With the Armys Game Squad, Creators of the Pentagons online hit (and recruiting tool) get a taste of military life, New York Times, Circuits, February 17, 2005, p. G-1 & G-7. See also Lisa Napoli, War by Other Means, Drawing a Line with Video Game Commanders Press On, New York Times, Circuits, 3/27/03, p. G1. See also Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News Report, Full Spectrum Warrior, where the U.S. Army paid $4 million to Pandemic Studieo for a video training game, 5/24/05. 56 Ashira King, Senior Social Science Research project, New York University, 2004. King notes that the best selling video game genres of 2001 were: 1st person shooters, and other shooter games. See also Jacob Hodes and Emma Ruby-Sachs, Americas Army Targets Youth, The Nation online, 2002. 57 Risa Noguchi, Gender and Technology paper, New York University, 2001. (See Appendix- Noguchis History of Computer Games in Japan.) Noguchi estimates that 15% of Japanese boys are video addicts; the hard core ones in the Japanese Video Sub-Culture play videogames 15 hours a day and do not even bother to go to school anymore, although this is not talked about in public in Japan. Some Japanese psychologists think that the increasing rate of ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is caused by sitting for long hours at a computer playing video games. This is even more extreme than my Spring 2005 findings in New York City where I interviewed twenty five 5th and 6th graders at a poor urban school and found that over half the boys play computer video games on average 8 hours a day, while the other half watches TV for that long. There was a small overlapping group of boys who watched TV and played video games at the same time with a split screen called Pivot. This U.S. and Japanese data on computer video game addiction suggests that young male computer victims with ADD are vulnerable to war games like americasarmy.com and what Adorno called the mass manipulation of the unconscious. I suggest that playing video games for 8-15 hours a day moves us closer to what I would call colonization of the Unconscious.
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