As we are soon celebrating World Press Freedom Day 2001, it is worthwhile for us, journalists and consumers of mass media alike, to reflect on what the American philosopher, poet and novelist George Santayana (1863-1952) once remarked: "Those who do not understand the past are condemned to relive it."

In the past few years in Malaysia, we have often heard and talked about propaganda. We usually identify it with the Information Ministry and the mainstream media, including several newspapers, radio stations and television programmes.

We also associate propaganda with certain media personalities, such as some senior editors, columnists, news analysts and even reporters who are seen to be close to ministers, top police officers and certain political leaders in power.

We are not very wrong but we should go deeper to understand the concept and practices of propaganda in order to crush it, and to build an open society founded on true and factual knowledge, intelligent and honest opinions, and the freedom of speech, thought and conscience.

What is propaganda? Graham Evans and Jeffery Newnham in Dictionary of International Relations (Penguin Reference, 1998) defines propaganda as "the deliberate attempt at persuading people, either as individuals or in groups, to accept a particular definition of the situation by manipulating selected non-rational factors in their personality or in their social environment, the consequent effect of this attempt being to change and mould their behaviour into a certain desired direction". (p. 451)

Another scholar of international politics puts it in simpler terms: "Propaganda is the unscrupulous manipulation of public opinion by symbols carried through the mass media." (GR Berridge, International Politics: States, Power & Conflicts since 1945 , Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1997)

Exploiting fear

According to Berridge, propaganda is characterised by "contempt for facts and logic", and the 'symbols' include both words and images.

In psychology and social psychology, the most potent and exploitable 'non-rational' element in the human psyche is fear.

Hence, since September1998, Malaysians have been bombarded endlessly and shamelessly by words and images of 'Indonesian riots', 'chaos and instability', 'Islamic revolution', 'rocket launchers', 'molotov cocktails', ' Intifada ', 'communists' and 'foreign secret agents' through the mainstream mass media.

Seen in the perspective of these definitions, it is clear that propaganda differs from normal advertisements of products and services, and honest expressions of thoughts and opinions.

For propaganda involves the elements of fraud, falsehood, deception, manipulation or exploitation of 'non-rational' factors in the personality or social environment of the targeted recipient.

The Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany, Hitler's Third Reich, Dr Joseph Goebbels once said: "... in propaganda as in love, anything is permissible which is successful" (quoted in p.17: David Welch, The Third Reich - Politics and Propaganda , Routledge, 1993).

A typical package of propaganda thus combined words and images that arouse fear, insecurity, jealousy, suspicion, prejudice and hatred against 'them' or 'out-groups', and of hope, stability, security, fraternity and love for 'us' or the 'in-group'.

Nazi propaganda

In Nazi Germany, the 'out-groups' or 'them' were Jews, Gypsies (or Roma), homosexuals, liberals, communists or Bolsheviks and 'foreign agents'.

The Jews or Gypsies were stereotyped as a 'genetically unclean or impure race'. The Jews, in particular, were further stereotyped as 'greedy and unscrupulous capitalists' and 'crafty Bolsheviks'.

'Liberals' were said to be 'unpatriotic', while 'Communism and Bolshevism' were painted as 'Jewish plots'.

And the negative stereotypes were repeated endlessly in different media on different occasions and settings: press, radio broadcasts, motion pictures, books and magazines, etc. To arouse fear, suspicion, jealousy, prejudice and hatred among Germans.

Above all, it attempted to create a psychological condition of insecurity among Germans vis-a-vis those 'enemies' of the 'pure' German nation, state and 'race'.

At the same time, the Nazis also churned out positive propaganda to portray Hitler as 'fatherly', 'invincible', 'strong', 'intelligent' , 'patriotic' and 'responsible', and that the German nation and people were actually 'great' but only now 'oppressed' by 'external enemies' and 'internal traitors'.

The message was always simple and easily understood by ordinary people in the streets: The German nation and people must always support the Nazi leadership to free themselves from 'oppression' and to be 'great' again.

Indeed, as Graham and Jeffery Newnham point out, 'stereotypes of out-groups' are essential elements in propaganda (p.452).

Even in our time and in our environment, we can still discern them: "Chinese are greedy capitalists/communists", "Malays are backward/lazy/emotional", "pious Muslims are fanatical" and "Westeners are morally decadent", etc.

Book burning

But did not Germany at that time have alternative media that provided alternative interpretation and definitions of events, situations and personalities?

It did but the capacity was not enough to countervail the massive volume and intensity of Nazi propaganda. And the alternative media was consciously suppressed. For example, in 1938, Nazis in Austria organised many book-burning campaigns.

There were, of course, no television, Internet, mobile telephone and fax machine yet. Short-wave radio sets were restricted and closely monitored, as the junta in Burma does now to online computers, modems and satellite discs, or as our own Home Affairs Ministry does to the many independent Malay-language publications.

Indeed, as Graham Evans and Jeffery Newnham observe, "propaganda is most likely to prove effective if the propagandist is the sole or major source of information for the particular audience." (pp.452-453)

The psychological and intellectual effects of massive propaganda could be horribly harmful without the conscious knowledge of the recipients themselves.

Unconscious victims

As an American journalist living and working in Germany at that period, William L Shirer recalls in his magnum opus, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - A History of Nazi Germany (Touchstone, 1990) (first published in 1959):

"Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a caf, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons.

"It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometime one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realised how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were." (p.248)

Shirer himself frankly admits that even he was at one time an unconscious victim of the Nazi propaganda: "I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state.

"Though unlike most Germans, I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those from London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcast, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings.

"It was surprising and sometime consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learnt from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it.

"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dreaded consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda." (pp.247-248)

German press

Shirer also details how the German press at that time worked: "Every morning, the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaign to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day.

"In case of any misunderstanding, a daily written directive was furnished along with the oral instruction." (pp.244-245)

Propaganda in Nazi Germany was also supplemented by secrecy. "It is quite remarkable how little of us who were stationed in Germany during the Nazi time, journalists and diplomats, really knew of what was going on behind the facade of the Third Reich.

"A totalitarian dictatorship, by its very nature, works in great secrecy and knows how to preserve that secrecy from the prying eyes of outsiders." (pp.x-xi)

Summing up observations and studies of propaganda in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, Oxford historian Norman Davis outlined five basic rules of propaganda, namely:

* The rule of simplification - reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foes', etc.;

* The rule of disfiguration - discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies;

* The rule of transfusion - manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own end;

* The rule of unanimity - presenting one's viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people; drawing the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star- performers, by social pressure, and by 'psychological contagion';

* The rule of orchestration- endlessly repeating the same message in different variations and combinations (see pp.500-501: Europe - a History , Oxford, 1996).

However, it is wrong to assume or believe that all propaganda is, or would be as successful as in the Third Reich. Even in the Third Reich, there were moments when propaganda failed.

Deadly conformity

As Shirer records: 'With all the newspapers in Germany being told what to publish and how to write news and editorials, it is inevitable that a deadly conformity would come over the nation's press.

Even a people so regimented and so given to accepting authority became bored by the daily newspapers. Circulation declined even for the leading Nazi newspapers such as the morning Voelkischer Beobachter and the evening Der Angriff .

And the total circulation of all journals fell off steeply as one paper after another went under or was taken over by Nazi publishers. In the first four years of the Third Reich the number of daily newspapers declined from 3,607 to 2,671. (pp.245-246)

This is an interesting insight that contradicts the oft-quoted Goebbelian maxim that "falsehood and lies repeated a thousand times would be accepted as truths".

There is another possibility vis-a-vis normal human psychology: Repetition could also breed boredom, apathy and an ultimate rejection of the message among the targeted recipients.

The propagandists who carry out the work of repeating same messages might be considered as moronic, stupid, mediocre or intellectually sterile.

There was even a moment when Goebbels himself failed miserably, as David Welch observes in his research monograph, The Third Reich - Politics and Propaganda (Routledge, 1993):

"In the final year of the war Goebbels attempted to resurrect the Fuhrer cult by depicting Hitler as a latter-day Frederick the Great, ultimately triumphant in the face of adversity.

"This absurd image, in the face of the gathering Russian occupation of Germany, represented an alarming flight from reality which no amount of propaganda could sustain.

"The 'Hitler myth' and 'charismatic leadership' could not survive such lack of success and were on the verge of extinction." (pp.88-89)

According to Berridge, there have also been cases where the propagandists and their decision-making masters are themselves deceived or deluded by propaganda they churn out to deceive or delude others: "... propaganda which exaggerates the strength of one's own side and minimises that of one's enemies may lead to self-delusion and provoke rash actions".

Hysterical propaganda

Propaganda whose content is too radical or tone too shrill would also be a blow to the prestige of the propagandists and their masters if it is finally decided that a change in course is unavoidable.

And propaganda of such nature "might even trap a government into continuing on a course which changed circumstances have rendered unwise". Also, hysterical propaganda may fail to keep certain distinctions clear and may, as a result, ending up antagonising one's friends, while merely amusing one's enemies (pp.144-145)

Our own national experience in the past few years shows that propagandists who have lost credibility as 'journalists', 'academicians', 'think-tanks', 'commentators' or 'stock market analysts' due to intellectual sterility and the lack of modern knowledge, and without being self-conscious of the loss, are not only the laughing stocks of the people and the world, but also a great embarrassment to their masters who may or may not be self-deluded.

A better understanding of the concept and practices of propaganda not only empowers us to be more intelligent and less credulous consumers of mass media in an open society, but also enables us to become journalists with a stronger sense of professional honour.

In the struggle for participatory democracy and human rights, it is also important to patiently empower the people intellectually to distinguish factual truths and honest opinions on one hand, and propaganda on the other.