This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

By Their Language Ye Shall Know Them

All use of language is intentional. All speech. All conversation. All writing. If it weren’t intentional, speech and writing would have no purpose and therefore they would be not just vain but incomprehensible, less communicative than the twittering of birds or the chattering of the mad. The purpose of all human communication is to convince or endear or to intimidate or any of thousands of other intentions. Sometimes it’s purpose is to deceive. But it is never mere chat; the substance of any communication is indistinguishable from its purpose.

The intention of propaganda is to develop a mass acceptance of some point of view. Propaganda is used by governments, large corporations, news media, and other interest groups by which it may be referred to as public relations, lobbying, advertising, or merely public information. Propaganda usually is employed reactively to counter an existing commonly held idea or defensively to prevent the dissemination of such an idea. Propaganda may or may not involve overt deception; but it will always be tendentious, selecting to communicate only that material favourable to the idea in question.

The problem of distinguishing deceptive or misleading language - intentional and not - from all the other purposes to which language may be put is a persistent one throughout human existence. Philosophers, theologians, scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, biologists, engineers, and criminologists are among those who have tried to crack the problem over the last several millennia but with no notable success. It appears to be impossible to connect what people say or write to what we casually call reality.

This is not to say that we don’t come to conclusions about the veracity of things we hear and read. Judicial juries are required to do so everyday to arrive at unambiguous verdicts. Physical and social scientists pride themselves on their ability to separate the factual wheat from the merely career-promoting chaff. Almost everyone takes what politicians have to say with at least some skepticism. My wife knows that if she reads something in the Daily Telegraph it’s probably correct even if the Guardian denies it. Are these responsible activities?

Most likely they are, but not for the reason we typically give: a comparison between what we are told or read with reality. None of the decisions we come to about the truthfulness about what we hear and read has anything to do with the connection between language and reality. There is no reliable connection between language and that which is not-language. Call this latter category of not-language ‘events’ or ‘reality’ in order to simplify things. But note that even in so doing we can’t escape the universal pull of the black-hole of language. ‘Events’ and ‘reality’ are, of course, nothing but words. Language has us by the throat and it’s not letting go.

What we do when we come to our conclusions is to rely entirely on language and nothing else. Jurors consider documents or other products of language and its derivative technologies (like tape-recording and CCTV footage).* Scientists review alternative ideas and conflicting test results, all presented in appropriate technical jargon. Voters believe a candidate’s pronouncements not because they know what is in the candidate’s heart but because of other things he or other people report. Even my wife occasionally checks up on the Telegraph, usually by reference to the daily Mail. Only language can be used to verify language.

So events and reality are not just elusive ideas, they play no role at all in our decisions about what and who to believe. This situation is not a consequence of new technologies like the internet or surveillance cameras, or rogue government agencies in Moscow, Beijing, or Washington. From the moment the first Neanderthal lied to his mate about sleeping with the woman in the next village, the proof of the truth of any statement, story, or testimony has always been other statements, stories, and testimonies. Reality has nothing to do with it. It’s all inside the bubble of language. The reality of language is the only reality we can discuss. Propaganda is as subject to this ironclad law as much as any other communication.

It takes someone of above average intelligence to recognise this law of the utter dominance of language. Peter Pomerantsev appears to be such a person. I know he is intelligent because the title of his book indicates that he understands the precariousness of his position as an exposer of propagandistic deception. He recognises that his exposé is yet another document within language that references many other such documents but that has no firm footing in anything else. So he makes a joke.

But he is not joking. Pomerantsev starts his story by reminding the reader that it used to be the case that mass deceivers could be identified by the way in which they restricted what was said, or written, heard or read. Any government or other authority that imposed such restrictions was probably guilty of deception in direct proportion to their restrictiveness. The Soviet Union was top of the list, along with most other dictatorial states.

But today, while there are still what might be called restrictive information practices, deception of a different mode has become dominant. This is “the flood of disinformation, ‘fake news’, ‘information war’ and the ‘war on information’.” The flood is produced not just by governments, and organised interest groups, but by technically talented individuals who can ‘make their bones’ in the high-tech establishment by disrupting the world... or who just want to have a little fun.***

Pomerantsev provides a great deal of descriptive material about Russian troll farms; social media mobs, and cyber-militias. But I don’t think this is the core of his book. He successfully avoids what can be called the epistemological trap of trying to prove the falsity of language by reference to what is not-language by two insights which are buried within his narrative. The first of these is fairly obvious but can’t be restated enough: real power is power over language. Those with power and who seek power always do so through language.

The information flood is no different in this respect than restrictions on information. The implication is clear: communication emanating directly or indirectly from power are always suspect. This is so regardless of the nature of the power, that is to say, civil, military, religious, commercial, democratic, monarchical, or dictatorial. The reliability of communication is inversely proportionate to the power which is its source. This seems to me the only remnant of Kantian epistemology that has any relevance in today’s world.

The second insight, which Pomerantsev declines to make explicit, is that the language of propaganda reveals itself for what it is if we allow ourselves to appreciate it. What the language of leaders like Duterte, Mobi, Putin, Trump, Erdogan, Zeman, and Bolsonaro have in common is an intentional coarseness as well as poverty of vocabulary (See also Viktor Klemperer’s analysis of the language of Nazism: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) They use toilet humour and ‘locker-room’ remarks. They are purposely insensitive to physical infirmities and social ‘abnormalities’ of any sort. They use racist, sexist, and violent innuendo to great effect in generating mob feeling. Their vocabulary includes frequent mention of Communist, homosexual (and its variants), fake news, vassal, dupe, whore, traitor, slut.

This recognition is not a trivial criticism of the cultural education or intelligence of these men (it is interesting to note the absence of women among these leaders). Rather it is a significant general conclusion about the nature of their use of language. It quite literally calls attention to the words, not to the grammar and certainly not to the pragmatic results of the words, but to the raw vocabulary. And I think he’s right: the words are the giveaway. The BBC is substantially less propagandistic than Breitbart. But, interestingly, the British Prime Minister’s office is also far less propagandistic than the White House.

So I think Pomerantsev has missed a chance. There is an intentionality within vulgar, imprecise, and a noticeably limited vocabulary. It is the inversion of Periclean rhetoric that is the modern form of propaganda. The banality of the words themselves is the key signal. When these words are produced by power, propaganda is certainly afoot.

* Demeanour, of course, is also part of human language. “Make my day” is a phrase with considerably different import spoken by Dirty Harry or by my boss who is expecting news about a prospective contract.

** All societies are of course subjected to a mix of information suppression and propaganda. The mix itself helps to identify the nature of the society in which it is employed. The one society which has consistently used both to great effect is that of the Christian Church. Pomerantsev claims to derive inspiration from the French philosopher Jacques Ellul who wrote a book entitled Propaganda in 1962 about its coming dangers. It happens, however, that Ellul was also a fundamentalist Christian who despised Islam. Good credentials for one claiming to know about the subject therefore.

*** Pomerantsev fails to make the point that this technique of ‘information abundance’ has always been the preferred option in democratic societies. It is expected, for example, in all political campaigns. And it has been used routinely by government (cf. 1950’s promotion of Cold War ‘readiness’), by the dominant media of the day (cf. the Hearst newspaper campaign for the Spanish-American War), and by commercial interests that are dependent upon favourable public policy (cf. the National Rifle Association’s successful reinterpretation if the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution over the last 30 years). This article, forwarded to me today by another GR member suggests just how pervasive propaganda is within democratic societies: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...

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