Propaganda, free speech and the slime attack

History is either a gentle teacher or a mocking scold.

Before the fact, history is a warning not to repeat the mistakes of the past, but after the fact, history cries out with harsh reproach: How could you have been so stupid as to let this happen - AGAIN!

I am reminded of that dichotomy by a story in the newspaper in which "the former president asserted that in the past 15 years 'every dictator who has ascended to power has climbed on the ladder of free speech and free press' and then 'suppressed all free speech except his own.'"

He could be talking about Hugo Chavez of Venezuela certainly, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. If it weren't for the time frame, you could throw in Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and numerous others.

Only the ex-president who was being quoted wasn't President George W. Bush, as you might assume, or even any other living president; it was Herbert Hoover, and the story appeared in the Daily Inter Lake on Nov. 8, 1937, at a time when the world was coping with Hitler, Mussolini and the rest of the rat pack.

Hoover noted, in a speech at Colby College in Maine, that free speech, free press and free debate are the 'very life stream of advancing liberalism," which reminds us healthily that "liberalism" was not always a dirty word to Republicans. Technically, liberalism is a branch of political philosophy that esteems individual liberty and equality as the most important of political goals, and limited government as a close third. By such reckoning, it should be a universal American philosophy, but instead the word has been hijacked by the far left and stripped of its association with liberty. Indeed, it has been transmogrified into almost its opposite by being merged with the vague notion of social justice, so that government is now seen by modern liberals as the main tool with which individuals can be cudgeled into action or inaction for "the greater good."

Moreover, as a recent column of mine lamented, liberals have a tendency these days to promote free speech only when it toes the party line. Straying away from groupthink can have the regrettable fallout of being ostracized as a socially inept Neanderthal, as we saw in the case of Miss California not too many weeks ago.

The efforts of political parties and social movements to gain sway over the national media in general is lumped under the rubric of propaganda. Hoover takes dead aim at what a headline writer called "the poison of propaganda" and said "we must incessantly expose intellectual dishonesty and the purpose that lies behind it."

Describing propaganda as "a sinister word meaning half-truth or any other distortion of the truth," Hoover said it works by "tainting of news, by making synthetic news and opinions and canards. It promotes the emotions of hate, fear and dissension."

It's almost like the president was peering into a crystal ball and pulling in a cable feed from MSNBC. Anyone who has ever witnessed one of Keith Olbermann's 'special comments' on that channel can precisely identify that synthesis of "news and opinion and canards' that worried Hoover. And if you don't see enough "hate, fear and dissension coming from Olbermann, you can throw in his frequent guest Janeane Garofalo for good measure.

The sometime actress had the audacity to say that the Tea Party" movement wasn't about honest protest against public policy, but was "about hating a black man in the White House." She said the national Tea Party movement was "racism straight up." Remarkably, we have even had local residents who should know better who have repeated this canard.

It is too easy to "blame the Internet" for the decline in civil discourse in American society, so it is worth paying attention to Hoover's history lesson on propaganda in the political field.

The ex-president notes that in the years since World War I, 'refinements' had been applied to the art of propaganda as it applied to politics. "The great quality of this improved poison," he notes, 'seems to be that it must be artistically done."

I suppose that may be what Garofolo's interest is in propaganda - the artistic element. It probably is a challenge to try to make it appear that you are being fair-minded and liberal when you are actually slandering a whole class of people. The technique, however, is nothing new. Hoover nailed it:

"If you don't like an argument on currency or the budget or labor relations or what not, you put out slimy and if possible anonymous propaganda reflecting upon your opponent's grandmother or the fact that his cousin is employed in Wall Street or is a Communist or a reactionary."

That fits perfectly the attacks on Tea Party protesters, who - let's remember - were actually arguing against the stimulus bill and the president's budget bill, not against a particular skin color.

As Hoover concluded, "You switch the premise and set up straw men and then attack them with fierce courage."

And even the 'slimy" attack as described by Hoover was employed in the mainstream media in discussions of the Tea Party protesters, who were incessantly referred to as "teabaggers' by the "artistically" inclined slimers such as Anderson Cooper on CNN. Although most folks would have no idea what "teabagging" was, Cooper and others in the "liberal" media did, and used this obscene reference gleefully to smear American citizens exercising their right of free speech.

The only thing remaining to bring history full circle is for the attack on Hoover to get under way in reader comments about this column. One thing is safe to predict; most of the comments will not be about Hoover's words (or even mine) in this column, but about the 'straw men" that are conveniently available to deflect attention from a serious argument. They may not have the audacity to call Hoover a "teabagger," but at the very least you can expect to be reminded that he single-handedly gave us the Great Depression. That line worked for Roosevelt, and there's no reason to let go of a "tried and true" smear formula. Set up the straw men and let 'em fly.

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com