#63 Brian Klaas (Power Corrupts Podcast)
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Hello! And welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom. Second newsletter of the week, after the elections in Cameroon, Ireland and Azerbaijan, which saw violence, confusion and division. Great. Today\\u2019s guest is\\u2026 Brian Klaas, author, political scientist at University College London, columnist for The Washington Post and host of the Power Corrupts podcast. Brian is an expert on democracy and world politics, and he delved deep into the history of dark propaganda in his latest podcast episode. So below is a post-game analysis of everything we talked about and more. But first, my most interesting articles of the week\\u2026 Enjoy! \\U0001f913
* Malcolm X \\u2014 Manhattan district attorney considers reopening case after Netflix documentary
* Coronavirus \\u2014 Shameful plug for my visual guide on how the virus has spread to 29 countries and killed 1,300 people and counting
* Clearview \\u2014 Friend of the pod Kashmir Hill examined the end of privacy as we know it in a truly disturbing piece
Brian \\U0001f447
What Is Propaganda?
Not to be confused with marketing or public relations, our friends at Merriam Webster define propaganda as \\u201cthe spreading of ideas, information, or\\xa0rumor\\xa0for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.\\u201d It\\u2019s impossible to pinpoint exactly when propaganda was first used because, well, propaganda is as old as time. But the earliest records point to The Behistun Inscription in 515BC when Darius The Great engraved his military prowess into a large cliff in the ancient Persian Empire, aka Iran, followed by how he was the chosen one by God. Sound familiar? Around 200 years later, Alexander The Great, king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon put his face on coins, monuments and statues as a form of propaganda. Yep, definitely sounds familiar.
The Behistun Inscription \\U0001f447
That all seems pretty harmless right? But as millennia, centuries and decades passed, propagandist techniques became far more nefarious. It\\u2019s generally agreed that the Catholic Church formalized propaganda and actually coined the term itself. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV set up the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, and then in 1627, Pope Urban VIII followed that up and created the College of Propaganda, both of which provided a library for research and a school to train priests and missionaries to spread the church\\u2019s message overseas. We can tell just by the names of those two institutions that the concept of propaganda was still relatively benign and unknown to the general public. But as even more centuries and decades have passed, propaganda has become a term associated with some of the greatest atrocities and darkest evils the world has ever seen.
When Did Propaganda Turn Evil?
One can\\u2019t talk about the dark side of propaganda without mentioning the Nazis, so let\\u2019s do just that. Perhaps the most common question people have is why the German public couldn\\u2019t see through the Nazi propaganda machine, similar to how most sane people see right through Donald Trump\\u2019s b******t (more on that later). Many Germans did, and many voiced their opposition to Adolph Hitler\\u2019s rhetoric well before the country went to war with the world in 1939. Many Germans were punished in unthinkable ways.
But as Brian pointed out on the podcast, propagandists like Hitler and his sidekick Joseph Goebbels didn\\u2019t just spread their lies and falsehoods right away. A smart propagandist first builds trust and credibility. For Hitler, that meant using events in the aftermath of World War One to his advantage. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 to formally end WW1, Germany was brought to its knees economically by the Allied Powers, who forced Germany into surrendering land and ordered them to pay reparations in the realm of $269 billion in today\\u2019s money. Naturally, Germany endured a devastating depression, which paved the way for Hitler\\u2019s rise.
In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before the Nazis gained power, but the seeds were sewn well before they finally did gain power in 1933. Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and detailed Hitler\\u2019s personal struggle in post-war Germany, as well as his nationalist and anti-Semitic views. As a sign of how people felt at the time, Mein Kampf had sold six million copies by 1940. This isn\\u2019t a newsletter rehashing World War Two, so let\\u2019s move onto propaganda in 2020 and visit our favourite Mango Mussolini\\u2026
Please Just Like Me
Before you read on, please like this edition of\\xa0Inside The Newsroom\\xa0by clicking the \\u2665\\ufe0f below the title. That way I\\u2019ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.
Propaganda 2020 \\U0001f1fa\\U0001f1f8
The Propagandist-in-chief is by far the most overtly lying president we\\u2019ve ever seen. Barry Goldwater came close, but he lost convincingly to Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential race. Trump has lied to us ever since he entered our lives decades ago, and has lied so much since he became president, CNN journalist Daniel Dale has carved out a niche role for himself literally fact checking every single statement the president makes. I couldn\\u2019t find how many lies he\\u2019s uttered since he became president, but I know that the number is well into the thousands. Since July 8, 2019, he\\u2019s made 1,729 false claims, an average of eight per day. I actually had Daniel on the podcast last year while he was still at the Toronto Star, which you can listen to below\\u2026
Trump didn\\u2019t create right-wing angst, he\\u2019s merely a symptom of years and years of lies and misleading framing by Fox News, aka the propagandist machine of today. It\\u2019s actually quite surprising how Fox continues to have such a large influence in corrupting public discourse in a media environment that\\u2019s so fragmented. But when you scan the right wing media landscape and see how many conservative outlets also living in alternate reality that were started by former Fox employees \\u2014 Glenn Beck\\u2019s BlazeTV and Matt Drudge\\u2019s Drudge Report to name just a couple \\u2014 you start to really see Fox\\u2019s impact.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2020 is depressing enough (sigh), and we can expect much more of the same from 2016. That\\u2019s because Facebook, which is the largest propaganda machine of them all, will allow political candidates to place false ads, a policy they claim supports free speech. Its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become completely deluded and is living in an alternate reality himself, becoming the most powerful propagandist in the world.
North Korea: An Unimaginable Alternate Reality
It\\u2019s hard to imagine what life in North Korea is like. No elections, no freedom, no truth. North Korea is in its own league when it comes to propaganda. Shortly after Korea was divided into two zones at the end of WW2 \\u2014 the north occupied by the Soviet Union and the south by the U.S. \\u2014 the Kim dynasty took over the north. Heavily influenced by the Soviet communist dictatorship, North Korea has smothered its citizens with lies and barbaric living conditions, so much so that there isn\\u2019t a place like it in the world.
Like with any dictatorship, cracks have begun to show in the country\\u2019s 70-year propagandist history, and the Kim dynasty\\u2019s days could be numbered. The country is so dependent on its agriculture industry that a poor harvest season has and will send the country into deep economic depression. The UN estimated that more than 10 million people \\u2014 around 40 percent of the population \\u2014 face severe food shortages. Because the country can\\u2019t provide for itself, North Korea relies so heavily on aid from other countries, mostly from China, but also recently from South Korea whose citizens have many relatives living in the atrocious conditions up north. Other countries include Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland and Ireland. I\\u2019ll leave you with Vice founder Shane Smith\\u2019s documentary of life inside the country, which is simultaneously gripping and heartbreaking.
Last Week\\u2026
#62 \\u2014 Krystal Ball (The Hill) on the rise of left- and right-wing populism
\\u2026 Next Week
I finally had\\xa0Paula Jean Swearengin on the podcast, who was one of the stars of the Netflix documentary\\xa0Knock Down The House alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is currently for the U.S. Senate from West Virginia.
Job Corner
Each week I\\u2019ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs.\\xa0Staying on brand this week, below are a selection of investigative openings\\u2026
Boston Globe Spotlight Team \\u2014 Investigative Journalism Fellowship
Dolcefino Consulting \\u2014 Investigative Media Reporter
Environmental Investigation Agency \\u2014 China Media and Policy Analyst
Oklahoma Watch \\u2014 Executive Director, Executive Editor
Project On Government Oversight \\u2014 Director of Research
The New Humanitarian \\u2014 Editorial Intern
Voice of America \\u2014 Internship program
This is a public episode. If you\\u2019d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insidethenewsroom.substack.com/subscribe'