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Society
of Propaganda I think the misery of the American public and the world in which we live can be seen nowhere better than in the suggestion (in many ways quite understandable) that we must take up our responsibilities as citizens and respond to the attacks by shopping. . . . A people who know nothing better to do than to shop turn out to be the most determinative killers, because at last something interesting has dropped in their laps, and they don't know how to think about it. May the church and the university be accordingly judged. -Stanley Hauerwas Osama bin Laden said the September 11 attacks have "shaken the throne of America and hit hard the American economy at its heart and its core." This along with the tape it was taken from was dismissed by White House staff as "false" and "terrorist propaganda." New York City's now ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said shopping during the Holiday season after Sept. 11, 2001 is a "patriotic duty." Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks Americans have been exhorted, and are exhorting each other to display "the American way of life." This society has reacted with charitable contributions to organizations promising to give the money to the families of the murdered at the WTC; patriotic songs; flag bearing; shopping; film making; new technology; and various social work to help people "cope" with loss and fear. We have responded with a culture, with habits that have been ingrained within us as Americans. Generally this is seen as a good thing. We are constantly reminded of the unity and "love" that has been shown in reponse to the challenges we have been faced with. The exhortation for Americans to shop in response to this challenge was a propaganda attempt also. It was one based not in political lies and falsity (propaganda as Ellul says is usually based not on lies but on "truth" and "facts" anyhow), but in the habits and customs of our society. It was a propaganda of a whole society. We broadcast through our actions; we marketed through our habits. Our society was a billboard to the rest of the world, advertising American's response to a challenge such as this. In short, our way of lifeis a form of propaganda: our way of life seeks conformity and adaptation to it from all of it's citizens and it seeks the assent and participation of those outside of our nation in the core habits and customs of our society. Jacques Ellul in his book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attititudes calls this "sociological propaganda." He shows that once a society behaves in this way, it has engaged propaganda "on its deepest level" (pp. 65). It is a totalitarian society in which the individual is integrated in subtle ways, through customs, habits, jobs, views on personal relations, etc. And this leads to actions for the individual which the individual is not aware of, and so they are involuntary. This involuntary indoctrination through the American way of life, has now become our criteria of what is good and what is bad. Everything that fosters this culture is good, anything that does not is bad. No criticism can be tolerated by the average American of this nation. To not be a patriot, not not do our" patriotic duty" as Giuliani called shopping is actually seen as bad, even evil. How far
we are from Eden! How far we have regressed into our own knowledge of
good and of evil! We take the fruit from a forbidden tree of culture and
habit and it becomes our criterion of what is wrong and what is right.
Our bombs are more a result of this forbidden fruit than they are of God's
"infinite justice." We must recognize what we are doing, and
that is the first step to disengagement.
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