Secret Propaganda Research Articles

Rose Macaulay and Propaganda

The novelist Rose Macaulay (1881–1958) had direct professional experience of Britain's secret propaganda operation during the First World War. She was among the first British novelists to take propaganda seriously as a subject for fiction, and wrote insightfully about its methods and its social implications. Moreover, her long career illuminates both the continuity and the development of the British state's clandestine efforts to shape public opinion at home and abroad, from the beginnings of systematic, state-directed propaganda in the First World War to the more diffuse strategies of early Cold War anti-communism. Despite her close connections to propaganda in both world wars, however – and notwithstanding the interest her fiction very frequently takes in the worlds of official information, disinformation, and espionage – Macaulay has hardly figured in recent scholarship on the links between literature and national information systems. This article argues that Macaulay approached the challenge of reconciling propaganda and literature differently from many of her modernist contemporaries, refusing to abandon the idea of fiction as a persuasive and socially-engaged form of imaginative writing. If this position made her an outlier in the climate of reaction against propaganda which followed the First World War, it would, by the early years of the Cold War, seem much more tenable. In its first half, the article establishes Macaulay's bona fides as a participant in Britain's wartime propaganda establishment, and describes the impression this experience left on her early fiction. It then turns to Macaulay's final novel, The Towers of Trebizond, in which religious propaganda and anti-communist rhetoric combine, to great comic effect, in the febrile atmosphere of the Cold War middle east.

Reflections on the ethics and effectiveness of America’s ‘third option’: covert action and U.S. foreign policy

ABSTRACT The United States has turned periodically to a Third Option in the pursuit of foreign policy objectives, a pathway between diplomacy and war-fighting. This option is known more widely as covert action (CA) or “special activities,” meaning hidden interventions into the affairs of other nations. Within this rubric are a range of aggressive initiatives, from secret propaganda operations to political and economic activities, as well as (at the extreme) paramilitary attacks and assassinations. This chapter explores the legal foundations of covert action, along with the degree to which these methods are subjected to accountability; its successes and failures around the world; and, central throughout the analysis, the ethical issues posed by use of the Third Option.

“One People, One Struggle”: Anya-Nya propaganda and the Israeli Mossad in Southern Sudan, 1969–1971

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the involvement of the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, in producing propaganda materials on behalf of the Southern Sudanese rebel group Anya-Nya, between 1969 and 1971. From 1961, Southern Sudanese politicians appealed for Israeli assistance in their struggle against the Sudanese government. Israelis saw great potential for anti-Arab propaganda in the Southern cause, but did not extend any significant support to the rebels until 1969. When they eventually did, they also embarked on a secret propaganda campaign on behalf of the Anya-Nya, seeking to promote the Southern struggle globally in order to delegitimize Arab nations and their Soviet supporters and draw attention away from anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian propaganda in the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967. Unlike earlier Southern Sudanese publications, the Israeli materials made extensive use of photographs and projected a new image of the Southern Sudanese leadership and its relationship with civilians. The publications, the paper argues, advanced both Israeli and Southern Sudanese interests, and reflected both Southern Sudanese and Israeli notions of nation-building.

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad – By Kenneth Osgood

HistoryVolume 95, Issue 320 p. 487-487 Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad – By Kenneth Osgood STEPHEN LONG, STEPHEN LONG University of BirminghamSearch for more papers by this author STEPHEN LONG, STEPHEN LONG University of BirminghamSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 September 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.2010.00496_11.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume95, Issue320October 2010Pages 487-487 RelatedInformation

Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad.

Kenneth Osgood, <i>Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad</i>.

Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad, by Kenneth Osgood

"Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad, by Kenneth Osgood." Canadian Journal of History, 43(1), pp. 215–216

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad ? By Kenneth Osgood

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad ? By Kenneth Osgood

Review: Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad, by Kenneth Osgood

Review: <i>Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad</i>, by Kenneth Osgood

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's secret propaganda battle at home and abroad

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's secret propaganda battle at home and abroad

Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (review)

Reviewed by: Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad James D. Marchio Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad. By Kenneth Osgood. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. ISBN 0-7006-1445-1. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 506. $45.00. Few pundits would suggest that Soviet-American struggles from a half-century ago provide much insight into the post 9/11 world. Yet Ken Osgood's comprehensive examination of President Eisenhower's use of propaganda at home and abroad in the 1950s demonstrates that 2005 headlines involving the "Lincoln Group" secretly planting fake pro-U.S. news stories in Baghdad newspapers have their origins in the Cold War. Osgood convincingly argues that total war was the defining experience for the generation of Americans who led the U.S. during the early Cold War. While these men recognized that the advent of thermonuclear weapons meant that military force could not be employed as it had been in the past, no such constraints applied to the battle for the hearts and minds of those throughout the world. Covert operations, cultural and educational exchanges, book publication and distribution, space exploration, and scientific cooperation could all be employed safely and effectively in this conflict. Total War begins by exploring the theory and practice of propaganda and early American psychological warfare efforts. It then recounts the major themes, campaigns, and operations of America's propaganda battles during the 1950s—Atoms for Peace, Open Skies, People-to-People program, and the space race. In the process it examines the key role played by private groups and individuals in the pursuit of the Eisenhower administration's ideological warfare campaign as well as the preeminent part played by Eisenhower himself. Osgood breaks new ground in shifting his focus from tales of psychological operations to foment unrest behind the Iron Curtain to the broader effort to win the hearts and minds of people in the free world. Through extensive archival research examining records from roughly three dozen [End Page 880] countries, he shows that Eisenhower's main effort was centered on retaining or winning over the support of allies, noncommunists, and neutrals. Osgood excels at demonstrating how distinctions between propaganda intended for "domestic" and "international" audiences were meaningless. U.S. psychological operations were premised upon the total war notion that public opinion at home needed to be agitated and organized to sustain national morale for the long struggle. Osgood's examination of how Eisenhower waged cold war and the way the military was drawn into this approach will be of particular interest to JMH readers. Total War also offers valuable insights for those engaged in the Global War on Terrorism, from the challenges confronted to the actual propaganda means and methods used. Total War is not without its shortcomings. Osgood credits Eisenhower with more vision and coherence in his strategic thought than the historical record seems to support. Moreover, his vision of how psychological warfare should be waged—as evidenced by the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the role of Radio Free Europe—was not always shared or correctly implemented by his subordinates, a gap not fully explored by Osgood. Nonetheless, Total War would be a welcome addition to any personal or institutional library. Well written and beautifully illustrated, this book provides engaging reading for anyone interested in the Cold War, psychological warfare, information operations, or the views and policies of the thirty-fourth president. James D. Marchio Manassas, Virginia Copyright © 2006 Society for Military History

:The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West

:The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West

Le Cinema du diable: Jean Epstein and the Ambiguities of Subversion

Le Cinéma du diable:Jean Epstein and the Ambiguities of Subversion Ludovic Cortade (bio) Translated by Roxanne Lapidus The words Georges Bataille used to introduce La Littérature et le Mal (1957) are well known: "Literature is the essential, or else it's nothing. Evil—a heightened form of Evil—of which it is the expression, has for us, I believe, the supreme value. […] Literature is not innocent, and, being guilty, it should in the end admit to it" (171-72). With these words, Bataille defends a sacrificial conception of literature and of the subversion of which it is the agent. In spite of everything, and contrary to his anthropologically inspired writings, Bataille is not concerned here with the social repercussions of evoking Evil as a category of symbolic representation. Despite the influence of Marcel Mauss, the principle of expenditure that invests the reader is not the object of his study; La littérature et le Mal is not about the sociology of gift exchange. If this phrase of Bataille's is well known, less familiar is that of Jean Epstein at the beginning of one of his last works, Le Cinéma du diable (1947), whose terms strangely foreshadow those of the foreword of La littérature et le Mal, ten years later: "Let's start the trial. The cinematographer pleads guilty" (339). With these words, Epstein begins a brilliant and rich demonstration that takes the form of a plea in defense of the only conception of cinema that he acknowledges—that of the avant-garde. Jean Epstein is known primarily for his work as a cinematographer: La Belle Nivernaise (1923), Les Aventures de Robert Macaire (1925), Mauprat (1926), La Glace à Trois faces (1927) and La Chute de la Maison Usher (1928), based on Poe's tale. In a vein that is halfway between ethnographic film and formal experimentation, Epstein made the works now known as his "maritime cycle": Finnis Terrae (1929), Mor'vran (1930), L'Or des Mers (1932), and Le Tempestaire (1947). But we cannot ignore the importance of his abundant theoretical works, written between 1921 and 1953, the year of his death. The argument of Le Cinéma du diable, which follows in the footsteps of Epstein's previously published texts, such as Photogénénie de l'impondérable (1935) and especially L'Intelligence d'une machine (1946) rests on a paradox: cinema, Epstein argues, is intrinsically the work of the devil, since it diffuses a "secret propaganda" whose vectors are the irrational [End Page 3] stimulation of feelings by images, impregnation with perpetual movement, and the revelation of the world valorizing a poetics of the "photogenic." In spite of everything, the very spectacle of this "diabolical" invention has the effect of purging the feelings of the spectator, paradoxically assuring the stability of the social structure. The question I'd like to explore is thus the following: to what extent can an artistic practice motivated by subversion claim to be, from the point of view of its reception in the social body, in contradiction with its initial ambition? In other words, how does the praxis aroused by a work become contradictory to the work's subversive aesthetic? Turning to the writings of Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille for support, I would hope to place this analysis of Le Cinéma du diable in a larger context of French thought on subversion, and to analyze the ambiguities inherent in the latter. Epstein bases his thought on a given: in the early twentieth century, going to the movies was still considered a socially degrading activity; since animated images participated in the debasing of humanity and in the corruption of morals, it could only be the work of the devil. However, Epstein reverses the meaning of the word devil by associating the activities of the Evil One with the great scientific discoveries of Bacon, Galileo, Copernicus, and da Vinci. According to Epstein, the devil is "the toolmaker of civilization," and should as such be "considered as a benefactor of humanity" (336). Thus the term "devil" designates the succession of negation through which the historical dialectic progresses. The devil is not an evil spirit; it is above all...

The Information Research Department: Britain's secret Cold War weapon revealed

The recent release of previously classified Foreign Office files has helped illuminate the early history of the secret propaganda unit, the Information Research Department (IRD). Although launched in 1948 by the Attlee government with the avowed intention of promoting Britain as a socialist ‘Third Force’ in world politics, IRD tended in practice to devote its earliest efforts to attacking the Soviet Union and Communism, not only abroad but also at home, where leaders of the Labour movement deployed its materials against the far left. By 1950 the Third Force mission had been abandoned altogether as British foreign policy shifted decisively towards support for an American-led coalition of Atlantic powers.

Confronting the Cominform: George Orwell and the Cold War Offensive of the Information Research Department, 1948-50

In the voluminous records of the Information Research Department (IRD), there is one slim file that attracts immediate attention. The IRD was the top secret propaganda department of the British Foreign Office created in early 1948.1 It soon became a crucial instrument in Britain's covert ideological offensive against the Soviet Union during Cold War. The files of the IRD are currently being released by the Public Record Office in London, and their diversity exemplifies the wide front on which the Cold War was fought: bundles of documents cover Soviet labour camps, support for anti-communist activity behind the Iron Curtain', encouragement of Red Army defectors, the establishment of a Singapore office to counter communist activity in Malaya, the sponsorship of an anti-communist trade union paper, Freedom First, and the compilation of confidential lists of politicians and BBC employees to whom 'non-attributable' IRD propaganda could be sent for use in speeches and broadcasts. Although the IRD will not fully emerge from the shadows until the bulk of its files are released (as yet, only the first two years of its operations, 1948 and 1949, are open to the public), few of the aforementioned activities, which in part mirrored those of the Soviet-backed Cominform, should surprise historians of the Cold War. But one file, FO1110/189, has the capacity to surprise, even shock, those who open it, for it concerns the relationship between the IRD and, arguably, one of this century's most prolific political journalists and influential novelists, George Orwell. In March 1949, the sister-in-law of Arthur Koestler, Celia Kirwan, visited a sick friend in the Cotswold hills. She spent the day discussing communism with George Orwell, then terminally ill with tuberculosis in Cranham, a Gloucestershire sanatorium. Celia first met Orwell at Koestler's home in late 1945, and they had remained close friends until Orwell's death in January 1950.2 But her visit also had a political purpose. She informed Orwell that she worked for the Information Research Department. So their conversation turned to the IRD: T discussed some aspects of our work with him in great confidence, and he was delighted to learn of them, and expressed his wholehearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims'.3 Orwell was too ill to do any further writing himself he had just completed the final draft of Nineteen Eighty-Four but suggested various writers and one publisher, who could be 'trusted' and whom he thought would support the work of the IRD. The writers Orwell named included Darcy Gillie, the Paris correspondent for The Guardian, Franz Borkenau, who wrote for The Observer and the critic Gleb Struve.4 The publisher was Victor Gollancz who had rejected Orwell's Homage to Catalonia in 1937 and (along with 22 other publishers) Animal Farm in 1944. In 1949 Gollancz was, it appeared, still preoccupied with the question of Palestinian dispossession in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel, so Orwell suggested that 'it might be a good plan to allow him to get these Arab refugees out of his system before trying to interest him in our plan'. However, according to Orwell, because his books 'always