cannabisnews.com: Why Do You Think They Call It Propaganda? 





Why Do You Think They Call It Propaganda? 
Posted by FoM on February 07, 2002 at 11:08:07 PT
By Judith Lewis
Source: LA Weekly 
Everybody’s talking about it. The White House spent $3.2 million on one minute of Super Bowl to run two ads that link illegal drug use to terrorism. The ads, which splice brief confessionals with big white words, are dark, spare, exquisitely controlled, created for the White House by high-style British director Tony Kaye (American History X). But their message is so bizarre you might suspect the groovy-and-goateed Kaye of playing a trick on his clients — inventing a propaganda campaign that works against itself.
On the other hand, does drug czar John P. Walters genuinely hold drug addicts responsible for terrorism? When House Speaker and Illinois Republican Dennis Hastert floated the drug-terrorism connection in the fall, Hastert had forgotten that, if drugs were decriminalized, they wouldn’t be trafficked by criminals. But that’s hardly the point. Nor is it relevant that 80 percent of methamphetamine is made right here in California, nor that the Taliban slowed opium production in Afghanistan. A responsible national drug program should be preoccupied with getting people off drugs, and even Walters must know that associating drugs with terrorism will dissuade no one from getting high. Linking drugs to terrorism serves only one end: to impress upon the public a primitive fear that illegal-drug profits fund terrorism. It does not matter how many people ridicule these ads; the idea will propagate without public consent. It works on an emotional level, not an intellectual one. It galvanizes fear. It frames the debate. It puts treatment advocates on the defensive side of an absurd fight. And the more the opposition complains about this high-priced campaign, the more the idea gets aired. Scientist and philosopher Richard Dawkins would call this a powerful meme. Speechwriters know well how memes work; I suspect Republican pollster Frank Luntz even uses the word, with grudging respect for Rutgers University’s department of memetics. “Contract With America” was a good meme; so was “kinder, gentler America.” “Axis of Evil” sounds blockheaded, but it will be a long time before the countries it connotes will lose the connotation. Propaganda memes have proved especially efficient in anti-drug campaigns. “Just Say No” was an obviously pointless slogan, but it worked its simple-minded way firmly into the vernacular. We may understand that addiction is a complicated problem. We may wish that Bush would be wise like Richard Nixon and appoint a doctor to oversee his drug policy. But the tight-lipped disapproval still resonates. Why can’t addicts “Just Say No?” And why do you think they call it “dope”?The drug war continues to be a convenient campaign for an ambitious administration, not least because it keeps ordinary people under siege, giving law enforcement an excuse to tap phones without too much argument. But for now, opponents of the drug war will be too busy railing against the notion that terrorists get their money from drug pushers to accomplish too much else. Source: LA Weekly (CA)Author: Judith LewisPublished: February 8 - 14, 2002Copyright: 2002, Los Angeles Weekly, Inc.Contact: letters laweekly.comWebsite: http://www.laweekly.com/Related Articles:Debating The Drug Ads http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11925.shtmlMore Deception in U.S. Drug Warhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11931.shtmlWhite House Anti-Drug Ads Super Bowloney http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11919.shtml
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Comment #4 posted by RavingDave on February 09, 2002 at 23:58:20 PT
Hey E, I Disagree
I see your point about Lewis' angle on this article, but I disagree that it was necessarily "detrimental to the movement," if you will forgive my paraphrasing. I think authors and journalists should be free to form opinions and perspectives, and I can appreciate what she's trying to say. There will be plenty of writers who will carry the torch for cannabis freedom. Lewis neither claimed to be such a writer, nor really claimed to be a friend to anyone. She simply drew a rather original and well-researched (if a little brief) connection between sociology and propaganda.If anything, what Lewis is trying to tell us is that we can't let our guard down. There is an ulterior motive in this propaganda, and the first step in fighting it is to be aware of it.In the case of her last statement, I believe Lewis is aptly pointing out that we might be too busy fighting the brushfire which this campaign ignites to be very effective in other areas. In effect, we could indeed be forced back a bit by this rather shady tactic. However, that should be all the more motivation for us to gather together and move forward, as a force for positive change.
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Comment #3 posted by E_Johnson on February 07, 2002 at 12:23:02 PT
Why the Superbowl ads were a good thing
The drug war continues to be a convenient campaign for an ambitious administration, not least because it keeps ordinary people under siege, giving law enforcement an excuse to tap phones without too much argument. But for now, opponents of the drug war will be too busy railing against the notion that terrorists get their money from drug pushers to accomplish too much else. Now think about this. Where have opponents of the drug war been so busy because of this ad? Drug reform activists have been so busy railing against this ad campaign ON NATIONAL TV --- where they so rarely get invited to rail over anything.And they have accomplished a lot by doing that.This ad was a mistake for the Bush administration, because it gave the mainstream media a reason to invite drug reform activists on the air, and now America is even more acquainted with the fact that a drug reform movement exists than they ever were before.And think of a bunch of football fans on the couch, maybe one or two of them smoke a little weed now and then, and this commercial comes on, and imagine the conversation they might have about the commercial. The weed smokers might then be motivated by this commercial to explain to their friends where and by whom marijuana is grown -- in America or Canada. Not by terrorists or by people who know terrorists.We have so much to thank the Bush administration for. Bush liberated the Democrats from their Clinton regime Drug War loyalty by appointing Ashcroft, Walters and Huytchinson.And now Bush is making a mockery of his own Drug War with these ads that are so easy to criticize that everyone and their cousin in the media is doing it.Yes drug reform activists have been very busy because of this ad. And that is a good thing. It means there is something to talk about that America wants to listen to.
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Comment #2 posted by SpaceCat on February 07, 2002 at 12:16:15 PT
Propaganda
The government really has done a superb job of creating a disconnect between reality and perception amongst the general populace.I've had several conversations with people who whole-heartedly agree that the WOD, interdiction, etc. don't work, can't work, and are counterproductive, then turn right around and say something like "Oh, but Heroin is so dangerous and destructive that we have to stop it coming across the border" without even noticing that they just flatly contradicted themselves. I agree that many writers are high on their own prose, but I don't think that's anything new. What is new is the massive consolidation of media outlets, which has resulted in an illusion of consensus that makes it hard for independent voices to break through the groupthink, or for mainstream journalists to buck the system, since that would be biting the hand that feeds them. 
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Comment #1 posted by E_Johnson on February 07, 2002 at 11:46:42 PT
When our friends aren't completely our friends
Okay this was another thing that appears to be on our side but is not.Marijuana is not mentioned once in the piece. Memetics is mentioned how many times?Is the point of the article that these ads were propaganda and based on falsehoods, or was the point of the article that Judith Lewis is into memetics and knows how to work them into a story?This is a big problem with journalism, why good marijuana journalism is such rare thing to find. Because of the advent of so-called "literary journalism" and the advent of postmodern teachings in colleges, writers today are more interested in the quality and intricacy of their own prose than they are in the facts they are responsible for reporting.How many of these Superbowl pieces have left marijuana out of the conversation completely?Lewis seems to be obeying the government edict that marijuana is a drug to be mentioned in the collective category of "drugs" and not to be singled out as something different. (Unless of course to sound an alarm.)And I won't go into the memetics of THAT. Except to say that the "marijuana = drugs" meme is one so successful that apparently even Lewis can't fight it.How much work would it have taken for her to add one sentence in this piece acknowledging that most drug interdiction in American consists of marijuana interdiction and most of THAT consists of domestic grow ops that don't fund anyone but American citizens whose only desires are to be left alone to do what they do.It wouldn't have taken much work, so why didn't it happen?But for now, opponents of the drug war will be too busy railing against the notion that terrorists get their money from drug pushers to accomplish too much else.Well, actually some of us will be busy railing against journalists who leave marijuana out of their memetics.But I think we'll still be able to do a lot more!I can't wait for this cynical postmodern literary phase of journalism to be over and for real journalism to come back again.
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