Propaganda & Language

Anyone who engaged in the act of masochism that was sitting through Blair’s recent performance on the BBC’s Politics Show, where he talked about how his “legacy” will “stand the test of time”, will probably not be surprised to learn that a survey of national opinion, published last week, shows the overwhelming majority of the British public think that the Prime Minister is “out of touch” and “too concerned with spin”. In fact, the report (described by the Guardian as “Britain’s damning verdict on Blair’s 10 years”) shows that contrary to what Blair thinks, the Prime Minister’s “legacy” is hardly likely to be remembered in a remotely positive light.

Blair however, regards public opinion with some disdain (apart from when it comes to its manipulation for the purposes of maintaining a closed political system). At the start of this year, he gave a speech in which he bemoaned the “reluctance of western opinion to countenance long campaigns, especially when the account it receives is via a modern media driven by the impact of pictures." In fact, according to Blair, the people of Britain “will be constantly bombarded by the propaganda of the enemy, often quite sympathetically treated by their own media, to the effect that it’s really all ’our’ fault.”

Use of the term “propaganda” in this case is very interesting. Most governments vigorously deny that they are engaged in propaganda, even though their work places them well within standard definitions of the term. Blair simply rejects this standard definition, instead relying on a definition of propaganda as something that is only possible for our enemies to engage in.

This is similar to use of the word ‘torture’ – the British government cannot rely on torture or evidence extracted by torture by definition. Instead euphemisms such as ‘coercive interrogation’ are employed. ’Torture’ is limited to the condemnation of ’uncivilized’ societies, it being both the proof and a problem of their enduring ’backwardness’.

“Weapons of mass destruction” is another good example. When referring to our nuclear weapons, the phrase “WMD” is barred from the lexicon and instead the term “independent nuclear deterrent” is used. Although in this case, it must be said, the phrase isn’t entirely misleading – the ‘nuclear’ bit is at least true.

When it comes to Propaganda, the British government carries out ‘marketing,’ ’publicity’ or ‘spin’ which has less pejorative connotations and implies that the technique is designed to benefit the recipients as opposed to the source - the assumption being that everything Britain does is so obviously right that the only thing necessary is to explain it to people.