Psychological warfare from it's inception has also targeted the people of the United States.
Part One
Psychological warfare first entered the English language as a translation and mutation of a Nazi German concept called weltanschauungskrieg, which means 'world view warfare'. During World War II, the Americans built on that and expanded it. They used it to mean a whole range of wartime tactics involving propaganda, dirty tricks, and covert operations to carry out the war. Where it emerges in to our modern reality; came in the wake of the war when more, so called, peace time versions of the technique emerged.
For years before 9/11, the government said that we were living in a world of no war; no peace. What that has meant, as a practical matter, is we were living in a world of ongoing low level warfare. One of the early terms that was used to describe this is psychological warfare. Nowadays it's called low intensity warfare; sometimes it's called, in a more polite form, public diplomacy.
When people talk about low intensity warfare, it simply means low intensity compared to nuclear weapons. Low intensity warfare from the stand point of people who are subjected to it, is quite high intensity. Some people would refer to it a total warfare conducted at the grassroots level, it's basically a form of terror; against union organizers, church people, and community activists of whatever sort. In Central America alone, you're talking about fatalities measured in the hundreds of thousands.
Communication research is the sort of ivory tower version of much the same sort of thing. There are schools of communication research at most major universities in the United States, sometimes folded in to the sociology department. But in any case, it is a box of preconceptions and of tools. Preconceptions about what communication is, and of tools for studying communication. These preconceptions and tools are used to train journalists, public relations specialists, television and radio personalities, and college professors. All kinds of people who might be called ideological workers, people whose day to day profession it is to shape other peoples ideology and ideas. Communication research is very much tied up with that, because it, in part, provides methods for measuring how successful these kinds of ideological campaigns have been.
Psychological warfare does not in anyway preclude the use of deadly force. Psychological warfare is warfare that is generated for the specific purpose of producing it's primary reaction in the psychological field. This does not necessarily imply that no blood is shed.
From it's earliest definition in classified government records psychological warfare is defined to include assassinations, covert operations, guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, etc. From it's inception psychological warfare has been the mating of violence on the one hand and what people would call today propaganda, or mass communication.
Psychological warfare from it's inception has also targeted the people of the United States. The common preconception is, however, this is something that the US only does to foreign governments. From the governments standpoint, from the standpoint of those that are paying the bills for the development, the targets always involve not only foreign audiences but domestic audiences as well.
Propaganda is a major component of psychological warfare and propaganda is divided into black, white and grey.
This is the first installment of an original series from No Agenda News. Read part two here.
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