Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
The only defense against enemy use of radio monitoring or broadcasting
consists of the application of wired radio--which means plugging all the
radio sets in on the telephone circuit, putting nothing on the air, and
defying the enemy to eavesdrop. If the radio sets are then policed, and
are made incapable of receiving wireless material, that particular
audience is effectively cut off from the enemy. (When the Red Army, with
its acute propaganda-conscious security, moved into many Eastern
European cities, the first thing it did was to round up all the radios
which the Nazis had overlooked. This prevented the liberated peoples
from being enslaved by the "filthy reactionary lies" of the American and
British governments, and made sure that the peoples would stay
liberated under influence of their local Soviet-controlled newspapers.)
Wired radio is expensive. Radio suppression is difficult; the successful
concealers of radio receivers become two-legged newspapers and go around
town spreading all the hot dope which the authorities are trying to
suppress. Scarcity puts a premium on such news; rumor then becomes
unmanageable. Except for strangely drastic situations, it is probable
that the great powers will continue to tolerate radio reception even
though it may mean letting foreign subversive propaganda slip in now and
then.
It is therefore likely that radio broadcasts will be available for
monitoring for the pre-belligerent stages of the next war, should war
come again in our time, and that radio may last through a great part or
all of the duration of the war. Factors which cannot now be foreseen,
such as radio control of weapons, will affect this.
Radio propaganda analysis follows the same considerations as those which
govern choice of materials for analyzing printed matter. It is a surer
method to follow one or two programs on a station than to make wide
random selections. A standard-wave transmitter to the home audience
comes closer to revealing the domestic scene than would a global
rebroadcast of ostensibly identical material. Radio has a further
advantage over print. Few nations print out separate propaganda for each
foreign-language area, while almost every large and medium-sized country
has international facilities for broadcast. Since the programs are
beamed to different language groups, the senders automatically make up
propaganda lines for each audience.[31]
Attentive monitoring can provide material for distinguishing the various
lines which any given nation is sending out to its friends, neighbors,
or rivals. Frequently the differences between these lines make good
counterpropaganda. If you hear the Germans telling the Danes that all
Nordics are supermen and all non-Nordics scum, while telling the
Japanese that the National Socialist idea of the world transcends
pluto-democratic race prejudice, put the two quotations together and
send them back to the Danes and the Japanese both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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