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The Basic Principles of War Propaganda
The Basic Principles of War Propaganda
The ten "commandments" of propaganda which Anne Morelli elaborates in this work are, above all, an
analytical framework for pedagogical purposes and for media analysis. Morelli does not want to take sides
or defend "dictators", but show the regularity of use of the ten principles in the media and in society:
"I will not put to test the purity of one or the other's intentions. I am not going to find out who
is lying and who is telling the truth, who is believing what he says, and who does not. My
only intention is to illustrate the principles of propaganda that are used and to describe
their functioning." (P. 6)
Nonetheless, it seems undeniable to the author that after the wars that characterize our epoch (Kosovo,
Second Gulf War, Afghanistan War, Iraq War), Western democracies and their media must be discussed.
As Rudolph Walther in his review in Die Zeit shows, Morelli in this work adapts the typical forms of
various contents of propaganda to news of her time. She takes up Arthur Ponsonby's Falsehood in War-
Time and George Demartial's La mobilisation des consciences. La guerre de 1914 about propaganda in the
First World War, systematizes them in the form of ten principles, and applies them to both world wars, the
war in the Balkans, and the war in Afghanistan. Four of the following principles, according to Walther just
emanate directly from the principle of friend or foe, "we and them" mindset and simplistic thinking in terms
of black and white.[1]
Contents
She comments: "The victor will always portray himself as a pacifist who loves peaceful agreements and
mutual understanding, but is forced into war by the opposing camp, as Bush or Blair did." "The enemy
camp is most certainly run by a maniac, a monster (Milosevic, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein), (...) which
challenges us and from which one must free humanity."[4]
The first step in the process of demonization, according to Morelli, is the reduction of a whole country to a
single person, as if nobody lived in Iraq, except Saddam Hussein with his "scary" Republican guards and
his "frightful" weapons of mass destruction.
Personalizing conflicts is typical of a particular view of history, according to which history is made by
heroes, by "great people". Anne Morelli rejects this view of history and writes tirelessly about what official
historiography conceals. The official account of history is idealistic and metaphysical in that it assumes that
history is the result of great ideas and great people. She opposes this view with a dialectical and materialistic
one, in which history is explained from the basis of the relations between people and from social
movements.
The opponent is characterized by all conceivable ills and evils. They range from the physical appearance to
sexual life. Thus, Le Vif in L'Express on April 8, 1999, depicts the "terrible Milosevic", she quotes no
statement or written document of the "ruler of Belgrade", but highlights his abnormal mood swings, his
morbid and brutal outbursts of anger: "When getting in rage, his face is distorted. But all of a sudden, he
will regain his composure." Of course, this demonization is used for other purposes as well, as all tools of
propaganda are. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, reports that in the US university teachers who disliked
Michel Foucault's popularity in their high schools wrote books on Foucault's private life. According to
them, this "masochistic and crazy homosexual" practiced "unnatural, scandalous and unacceptable sexual
practices." By disqualifying Foucault as a person, they could spare themselves the more difficult
confrontation with the author's thinking or with the discourses of a political person and "refute" him on the
basis of moral judgments.
Morelli adds: "The principle has a complement: that the enemy is a bloodthirsty monster representing a
barbaric society."
She sees hardly any differences in the way atrocities are described in different wars. For the period of the
First World War, Ponsonby portrays the rendering of gang rape, murder, mistreatment and mutilation of
children by German soldiers. Morelli shows how similar reports from wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo
are.
She cites the fact that already in the First World War the losses accumulated within the first month and rose
to 313,000 casualties. But the Supreme Command never even reported the loss of a horse and did not
publish a list of the dead.
Morelli sees the Iraq war as another example of the prohibiting the publication of photographs of the coffins
of American soldiers. The losses of the enemy, however, were gigantic, their army offered no resistance.
"This type of information enhances morale in both camps and makes public opinion convinced of the
effectiveness of the conflict."[7]
She refers to caricaturists that she thinks are used to justify the war and depict the "butcher" and his
atrocities, while others with their camera in hand, produce heart-moving documents about Albanian
refugees, carefully selecting those that are most similar to the audience, such as the pretty blonde Albanian
child with homesickness in the eye, who should remind us of the Albanian victims.
Everywhere, Morelli writes, "manifests" are published. The Manifesto of the Hundred, aiming at supporting
France in the First World War, was signed by André Gide, Claude Monet, Claude Debussy and Paul
Claudel. Closer to the present is the Manifesto of the 12 against the "new totalitarianism" of Islamism. These
groups of intellectuals, artists and distinguished personalities justify the actions of their respective state
power.
10. Whoever casts doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a
traitor
This last principle complements all others, Morelli explains. Whoever questions only one of the principles is
necessarily a collaborator. There are only two areas, good and bad. You can only be for or against evil. The
opponents of the Kosovo war are thus accomplices of Milošević. Whole groups are considered anti-
American, Pierre Bourdieu, Régis Debray, Serge Halimi, Noam Chomsky or Harold Pinter. The "pacifist
family" includes Gisèle Halimi, Renaud, Abbé Pierre... and their press organs, i.e. Le Monde Diplomatique
and the PCF.
Therefore, Morelli says, it is made impossible to give a dissenting opinion without running the risk of a
"lynching process of the media". The normal pluralism of opinions no longer exists, all opposition is
silenced and discredited by fake arguments.
According to Morelli, this procedure was applied again in the Iraq war, although the world public was far
more divided than in the Kosovo conflict. Being against the war meant advocating for Saddam Hussein.
The same design was used in a completely different context, namely during the vote on the European
Constitution. To be against the Constitution was seen to mean to be against Europe.
Jochen Stöckmann is more critical of Morelli's investigation. He finds it startling "that Morelli does not
describe how the gears of media interlock, she does not research into the mechanisms and details, but
argues exclusively with quotes, basing her criticism on the products of propaganda themselves. This type of
superficial criticism of the media has long since become an integral part of the infotainment machinery,
Stöckman maintains. To those who are so "enlightened", but actually rather hardened to criticism, each war
reporting must appear as propaganda as long as it is not based on a pacifist attitude. Morelli should have
cleared up the confusing situation, Stockmann insists, instead of just recommending 'systematic doubt' as an
'antidote'. But its effectiveness is likely to be exhausted quickly, as the historian sees almost every piece of
news contaminated by the poisonous products of the right way of thinking which are poured out by media
every day. [10]
In his review in H-Soz-Kult on June 29, 2005, Lars Klein from the University of Göttingen writes after
praising the relevance of the topic and the usefulness of her analysis, Morelli lacks clarification of whether
"the media" themselves are acting independently, whether they follow political or commercial interests and
if they consciously or only unreflectingly abuse the "good faith" of the citizens. "Precisely because she uses
the entire tenth chapter [...] to show how important media stick to their 'own side', further and clearer
explanations would have been desirable." [11]
References
1. Walther, Rudolf (2004-11-18). "Buch im Gespräch: Schlichte Schwarz-Weiß-Mythologie: Wie
die Propaganda in Zeiten des Krieges funktioniert" (https://www.zeit.de/2004/48/P-Morelli).
Die Zeit (in German). ISSN 0044-2070 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0044-2070). Retrieved
2019-02-24.
2. Ibid, S. 14.
3. Michel Collon: « attention médias !
4. Anne Morelli: « L’histoire selon les vainqueurs, l’histoire selon les vaincus. » 8 décembre
2003 in: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/8dec_fulltexts.htm Archived (https://web.archive.org/
web/20221201130827/https://www.brusselstribunal.org/8dec_fulltexts.htm) 2022-12-01 at
the Wayback Machine.
5. Anne Morelli, op. cit., S. 27.
6. Ibid, S. 34.
7. Ibid, S. 56.
8. Anne Morelli: « les 10 commandements de Ponsonby », sur le site de Zaléa TV: [1] (http://w
ww.zalea.org/ancien/ungi/communication/propamorelli.html).
9. Rudolf Walther (2004-11-18). "Schlichte Schwarz-Weiß-Mythologie: Wie die Propaganda in
Zeiten des Krieges funktioniert" (http://www.zeit.de/2004/48/P-Morelli). Zeit.de (in German).
Retrieved 2015-12-05.
10. Jochen Stöckmann (2004-12-06). "Anne Morelli: Die Prinzipien der Kriegspropaganda" (htt
p://www.deutschlandfunk.de/anne-morelli-die-prinzipien-der-kriegspropaganda.730.de.html?
dram:article_id=102366) (in German). Deutschlandfunk. Retrieved 2015-12-05.
11. Lars Klein (2005-06-29). A. Morelli: Die Prinzipien der Kriegspropaganda (http://hsozkult.ges
chichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2005-2-226) (in German). zu Klampen.
ISBN 9783934920439. Retrieved 2015-12-05. {{cite book}}: |periodical= ignored
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