Randal Marlin
Encyclopedia
Randal Marlin, is a Canadian philosophy
professor
at Carleton University
in Ottawa
who specializes in the study of propaganda
. He was educated at Princeton University
, McGill University
, the University of Oxford
, and the University of Toronto
. After receiving a Department of National Defence
fellowship
to study under propaganda scholar Jacques Ellul
at Bordeaux
in 1979-1980, he started a philosophy and mass communications class at Carleton called Truth and Propaganda, which has run annually ever since.
One of the texts for this class is his 2002 book, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, which examines historical, ethical, and legal issues relating to propaganda. Marlin acknowledges that there are many definitions of propaganda, including favourable ones. However, his book reflects Ellul's view that propaganda suppresses individual freedom and autonomy.
In 1998, Marlin published a book examining the public uproar following the appointment of a former separatist Quebec political candidate to the top administrator's post at the new Ottawa Hospital. The David Levine Affair: Separatist Betrayal or McCarthyism North?, criticizes the Ottawa news media for fanning the flames of intolerance in their quest for higher circulations and audience ratings. The book also documents how the media kept the controversy going with a barrage of stories, columns, letters, editorials and radio phone-in shows. The David Levine Affair draws on Marlin's knowledge of propaganda techniques that play on stereotypes as well as pre-existing fears, suspicions and resentments to incite intense emotional reactions.
Marlin's studies and teaching in the field of propaganda have earned him the nickname "Ottawa's Orwell
".
, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency
. The family moved to Montreal
in 1946 after his father started working for the United Nations
. Marlin moved again to Ampleforth
, a Benedictine
college and boarding school, in England. "The school ran largely through the authority of the older boys over the younger boys," Marlin recalled during an interview in 2008. "You can see how people abuse power, and I got very interested in things about law."
In 1955, Marlin began four years of university studies at Princeton. He intended to pursue a career in physics
, but discovered that he "couldn't really handle the math of nuclear physics in the second year." Fortunately, the university encouraged students to enroll in subjects outside their main fields and Marlin studied Greek philosophy. He also worked as a journalist at the student newspaper, the Daily Princetonian where he enjoyed stirring up controversy.
Marlin's interest in both philosophy and journalism led him to study the philosophy of language
at McGill University. He wrote his thesis on Ernst Cassirer
and the phenomenology of language earning an MA degree in philosophy in 1961. At Trinity College, Oxford
he spent two years studying Edmund Husserl
's phenomenology and the philosophy of existentialism
. In 1963-64, Marlin taught and studied existentialism at the Institute for American Universities at Aix-en-Provence
, France. Then in 1964, he began two years of teaching and PhD studies at the University of Toronto. His PhD thesis, completed in 1973, examined problems concerning morality and criminal law.
's Rhetoric
that a vivid example can be much more persuasive than logical arguments, an insight reinforced by a fellow community activist. "One thing I recall him saying," Marlin told an interviewer years later, "'If there's an accident in the area, exploit it. That's the time people will act to make changes in the traffic patterns. So don't miss the opportunity when something like that comes up.'"
Marlin's growing interest in persuasion took on added dimensions as he began reading The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. The book argues that every field of human activity is now dominated by efficient technical methods or, what Ellul calls, technique. Marlin says Ellul's work showed him how the techniques of creating and managing public opinion feed off of or augment each other. Ellul had also published a landmark study of propaganda
which explains how information can be used in the exercise of power. "That's the central idea of propaganda," Marlin says, "the maintaining or gaining of power over others."
in France, he would establish a university course on propaganda. To his surprise, he won the fellowship. "I had this great delight of studying for a year with Jacques Ellul. I found him as fascinating in person as he was in his writings." After his year abroad, Marlin returned to Carleton and created the course Truth and Propaganda.
In his chapters on ethics, Marlin suggests that propaganda is always ethically questionable because it tries to manipulate using misleading information, emotional appeals and psychological pressure. He notes that although we tend to associate propaganda with political power
or ideology
, it also includes other forms of persuasion such as advertising
and public relations
.
, British propaganda accused German soldiers of publicly raping women in the town square, decapitating babies and forcing parents to watch as their children's hands and ears were cut off. The American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton
resorted to atrocity propaganda during the 1990/91 Gulf War
when it spread the story that the Iraqi soldiers who had invaded Kuwait were ripping helpless Kuwaiti babies from hospital incubators.
incited hatred and loathing of Germans who were supposedly "boiling their own dead soldiers to extract from their bodies lubricating oil, fats, soap, glue, glycerine for explosives, bonemeal for animal feed, and fertilizer." According to Marlin's research, the story was likely concocted by British and Belgian propagandists in London and then spread far and wide beginning on April 17, 1917 by the Times and the Daily Mail, newspapers owned by Lord Northcliffe
, a man with close connections to British propaganda.
The Northcliffe papers gave the story credibility by combining a mistranslated report from a German newspaper about dead horses being boiled down for glue, with an invented story, ostensibly from Belgian newspapers, quoting a detailed, eyewitness description of dead German soldiers being dumped into a huge cauldron at a "Corpse Exploitation Establishment." Other news media spread the gruesome story worldwide.
According to Marlin and Joachim Neander, the Corpse Factory story also illustrates other propaganda techniques including the use of deceptive language, appeal to emotion
and the Big Lie
. They write that after the story was exposed as false in 1925, people were determined not to be fooled again. Thus, many doubted reports about the Holocaust
early in World War II—testimony to the long-lasting and harmful effects of atrocity propaganda.
and Jacques Ellul
strongly influenced his own writing. He refers to both thinkers as major propaganda theorists "who sought to expose the forces at work integrating an individual into a larger system and frustrating an individual's self-development and freedom."
, the language Orwell invented in his satirical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
to illustrate how words could reinforce the totalitarian
power of a police state
by eradicating historical memory and narrowing the range of thought.
Marlin also refers to Orwell's famous 1946 essay Politics and the English Language
which describes, for example, how a euphemism
such as pacification served to cover up state violence and murder. "The extraordinary thing," Marlin notes, "is that exactly the same word for exactly the same kind of activity was used in the Vietnam War
many years later."
Marlin writes that Orwell showed how the owners of weekly magazines used adventure stories and comics to transmit capitalist
and imperialist
values partly through the repeated use of class
and national stereotype
s. He observes that "the most effective propaganda is not recognized as such, and its message is often best presented obliquely."
, law, and political science
, along with careful study of biblical
and Marxist
writings." Marlin adds that for Ellul, propaganda is a technique that promotes acceptance of other techniques in a mass society where people are routinely victims of the illusion that technology will solve all our problems. Thus, propaganda is needed to adjust people to conditions imposed by technological development --- conditions that may require them to adapt to the increasingly inescapable requirements of the technological system. Elsewhere, Marlin has argued that the large and powerful vested interests that benefit from what he calls "the technological system" generate systematic propaganda glorifying technology. In a review of Ellul's book The Technological Bluff, Marlin comments on "the obscene way in which American television lavished praise on smart bombs
" during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War
"paying little attention to the human suffering they caused."
Marlin explains that for Ellul, propaganda is founded on the governing myths of a society. These include the myths of work, happiness, the nation, youth and the hero. Ellul sees such myths as "pre-propaganda" because they lay the groundwork for active propaganda campaigns. Marlin points out that Ellul's concept of "sociological propaganda" is similar in that it also provides the basis for more overt propaganda campaigns. He writes that the notion of an "American way of life
", for example, provides a sociological backdrop for active propaganda. "Once one accepts the American way of life as superior, it becomes a criterion of good and evil; things that are un-American become evil," Marlin writes.
Aside from Ellul's work on propaganda and technology, Marlin has also written appreciatively about the French thinker's theological
studies. His 1986 review of Ellul's Money and Power, for example, concludes that it contains "a wealth of insight" adding, "[a]s Roman Catholics we have much to learn, and relearn, from this book. Marlin notes Ellul's belief that money predisposes people to neglect their primary obligation toward God. "The real question," Marlin writes, "is whether wealth or the prospect of attaining it is the dominant force in our lives. Any time we subordinate human considerations to narrow economic exchange relationships --- ignoring the fact that cost-savings programmes
cause widespread unemployment, for example --- we reveal a preoccupation with the wrong standpoint. Our heart is after the wrong treasure."
as administrator of The Ottawa Hospital
, an amalgamation of the Ottawa General, founded by French-speaking Roman Catholic nuns, and the Ottawa Civic which, although officially non-denominational, was regarded as a Protestant, predominantly English-speaking institution. Levine, who was fluently bilingual, had 15 years experience running hospitals in Montreal. He had also served as president of the Canadian Association of Teaching Hospitals. However, in 1979, Levine had run unsuccessfully as a candidate for the separatist Parti Québécois
in a Quebec provincial election and he had campaigned in favour of Quebec's sovereignty in the provincial referendum of 1980. At the time of his appointment to the $330,000 hospital administrator's job in Ottawa, Levine was working as the Parti Québécois government's representative in New York.
After the news of Levine's appointment broke on May 1, 1998, outraged readers wrote record numbers of letters to Ottawa newspapers and flooded radio phone-in shows with angry calls. Both of Ottawa's major newspapers, the Ottawa Citizen
and the Ottawa Sun
, published editorials and columns condemning Levine's appointment and calling on him to resign. On May 19, 1998, the "hurricane of protest" drew national attention when a boisterous crowd confronted the hospital's board of directors in an Ottawa auditorium expressing "unmitigated fury" and referring to Quebec separatists as "anti-Canadians,
bastards." In the end, the hospital board refused to fire Levine and after about a month, the public anger subsided.
In his analysis of the affair, Marlin criticizes the Ottawa media for fanning the flames of protest in their competitive pursuit of higher circulations and audience ratings. He also argues that although Canadians tend to regard McCarthyism
as a feature of U.S. political life, the Levine affair contained its basic ingredients -- "a strident patriotism, which reduced complex questions to a simple us-and-them mentality." He adds: "We are dealing not just with a local issue, but with a problem that is at the core of the Canadian unity debate. The Levine affair is a microcosm of suspicion, mistrust and misunderstanding that could someday be repeated on a larger scale with worse consequences."
About 200 people turned out in November, 1998 when Marlin launched his book on the Levine affair at an Ottawa Chapters
store. According to a report in the Ottawa Citizen, many heckled the author, objecting to his contention that Levine's political views were irrelevant to his work as a hospital administrator. The report added: "As some members of the crowd became more hostile, Mr. Marlin demanded to know if a heckler had read his book. When the man answered no, Mr. Marlin shouted back: 'It's typical of the prejudice I'm trying to fight.' The arguing continued for a lengthy time and then the heckler approached Mr. Marlin and whispered, 'I have two sons, and I'll never send them to Carleton because of people like you.'"
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
at Carleton University
Carleton University
Carleton University is a comprehensive university located in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. The enabling legislation is The Carleton University Act, 1952, S.O. 1952. Founded as a small college in 1942, Carleton now offers over 65 programs in a diverse range of disciplines. Carleton has...
in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
who specializes in the study of propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
. He was educated at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
, the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, and the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
. After receiving a Department of National Defence
Department of National Defence (Canada)
The Department of National Defence , frequently referred to by its acronym DND, is the department within the government of Canada with responsibility for all matters concerning the defence of Canada...
fellowship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
to study under propaganda scholar Jacques Ellul
Jacques Ellul
Jacques Ellul was a French philosopher, law professor, sociologist, lay theologian, and Christian anarchist. He wrote several books about the "technological society" and the interaction between Christianity and politics....
at Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
in 1979-1980, he started a philosophy and mass communications class at Carleton called Truth and Propaganda, which has run annually ever since.
One of the texts for this class is his 2002 book, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, which examines historical, ethical, and legal issues relating to propaganda. Marlin acknowledges that there are many definitions of propaganda, including favourable ones. However, his book reflects Ellul's view that propaganda suppresses individual freedom and autonomy.
In 1998, Marlin published a book examining the public uproar following the appointment of a former separatist Quebec political candidate to the top administrator's post at the new Ottawa Hospital. The David Levine Affair: Separatist Betrayal or McCarthyism North?, criticizes the Ottawa news media for fanning the flames of intolerance in their quest for higher circulations and audience ratings. The book also documents how the media kept the controversy going with a barrage of stories, columns, letters, editorials and radio phone-in shows. The David Levine Affair draws on Marlin's knowledge of propaganda techniques that play on stereotypes as well as pre-existing fears, suspicions and resentments to incite intense emotional reactions.
Marlin's studies and teaching in the field of propaganda have earned him the nickname "Ottawa's Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
".
Early life and education
Randal Marlin spent his early childhood in Washington D.C. where he was born in 1938. His father worked for the U.S. Office of Strategic ServicesOffice of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
. The family moved to Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
in 1946 after his father started working for the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. Marlin moved again to Ampleforth
Ampleforth College
Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, England, is the largest Roman Catholic co-educational boarding independent school in the United Kingdom. It opened in 1802, as a boys' school, and is run by the Benedictine monks and lay staff of Ampleforth Abbey...
, a Benedictine
Benedictine
Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...
college and boarding school, in England. "The school ran largely through the authority of the older boys over the younger boys," Marlin recalled during an interview in 2008. "You can see how people abuse power, and I got very interested in things about law."
In 1955, Marlin began four years of university studies at Princeton. He intended to pursue a career in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, but discovered that he "couldn't really handle the math of nuclear physics in the second year." Fortunately, the university encouraged students to enroll in subjects outside their main fields and Marlin studied Greek philosophy. He also worked as a journalist at the student newspaper, the Daily Princetonian where he enjoyed stirring up controversy.
Marlin's interest in both philosophy and journalism led him to study the philosophy of language
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
at McGill University. He wrote his thesis on Ernst Cassirer
Ernst Cassirer
Ernst Cassirer was a German philosopher. He was one of the major figures in the development of philosophical idealism in the first half of the 20th century...
and the phenomenology of language earning an MA degree in philosophy in 1961. At Trinity College, Oxford
Trinity College, Oxford
The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of Sir Thomas Pope , or Trinity College for short, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It stands on Broad Street, next door to Balliol College and Blackwells bookshop,...
he spent two years studying Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
's phenomenology and the philosophy of existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
. In 1963-64, Marlin taught and studied existentialism at the Institute for American Universities at Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence
Aix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city-commune in southern France, some north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture. The population of Aix is...
, France. Then in 1964, he began two years of teaching and PhD studies at the University of Toronto. His PhD thesis, completed in 1973, examined problems concerning morality and criminal law.
Early professional career
In 1966, Randal Marlin accepted a teaching post at Carleton in Ottawa, partly because the university had a journalism school. By then, he had worked for two summers at the Montreal Star. He decided to institute a course called Society, Values and Technology to explore several interrelated themes. One reflected his growing involvement in preserving the older neighbourhood where he lived from being overwhelmed by heavy traffic. Marlin says that in the midst of that campaign, he realized from reading AristotleAristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's Rhetoric
Rhetoric (Aristotle)
Aristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the 4th century BC. In Greek, it is titled ΤΕΧΝΗ ΡΗΤΟΡΙΚΗ, in Latin Ars Rhetorica. In English, its title varies: typically it is titled Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, or a Treatise on...
that a vivid example can be much more persuasive than logical arguments, an insight reinforced by a fellow community activist. "One thing I recall him saying," Marlin told an interviewer years later, "'If there's an accident in the area, exploit it. That's the time people will act to make changes in the traffic patterns. So don't miss the opportunity when something like that comes up.'"
Marlin's growing interest in persuasion took on added dimensions as he began reading The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. The book argues that every field of human activity is now dominated by efficient technical methods or, what Ellul calls, technique. Marlin says Ellul's work showed him how the techniques of creating and managing public opinion feed off of or augment each other. Ellul had also published a landmark study of propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
which explains how information can be used in the exercise of power. "That's the central idea of propaganda," Marlin says, "the maintaining or gaining of power over others."
Truth and propaganda
Marlin's fascination with Ellul's writings gave him an idea. "During a crazy moment," he recalls, "I saw one of those advertisements for a Department of National Defence (DND) fellowship, offered for study abroad. It was $12,000, which, in those days -- 1979-1980, was a lot of money." Marlin told DND that Canadians needed to know more about the dangers of subversive propaganda and that if he were given a chance to study with Jacques Ellul at the University of BordeauxUniversity of Bordeaux
University of Bordeaux is an association of higher education institutions in and around Bordeaux, France. Its current incarnation was established 21 March 2007. The group is the largest system of higher education schools in southwestern France. It is part of the Academy of Bordeaux.There are seven...
in France, he would establish a university course on propaganda. To his surprise, he won the fellowship. "I had this great delight of studying for a year with Jacques Ellul. I found him as fascinating in person as he was in his writings." After his year abroad, Marlin returned to Carleton and created the course Truth and Propaganda.
Propaganda and ethics
In 2002, Marlin published Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, the book that now serves as one of the texts for his university course on propaganda. It contains extensive information about propaganda including various definitions, a brief history from ancient times to the 20th century and a discussion of propaganda techniques. Marlin bases his own definition of propaganda on what he sees as three of its main features. First, propaganda aims to influence many people in organized and deliberate ways. Second, it is likely to deceive its target audience and third, it uses psychological influences to suppress or bypass rational thought. Therefore, Marlin defines propaganda as:The organized attempt through communication to affect belief or action or inculcate attitudes in a large audience in ways that circumvent or suppress an individual's adequately informed, rational, reflective judgment.
In his chapters on ethics, Marlin suggests that propaganda is always ethically questionable because it tries to manipulate using misleading information, emotional appeals and psychological pressure. He notes that although we tend to associate propaganda with political power
Political power
Political power is a type of power held by a group in a society which allows administration of some or all of public resources, including labour, and wealth. There are many ways to obtain possession of such power. At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by the...
or ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
, it also includes other forms of persuasion such as advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
and public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
.
Atrocity propaganda
In Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, Marlin notes that atrocity propaganda is used to demonize wartime enemies. He writes, for example, that during World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, British propaganda accused German soldiers of publicly raping women in the town square, decapitating babies and forcing parents to watch as their children's hands and ears were cut off. The American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton
Hill & Knowlton
Hill & Knowlton is a global public relations company, headquartered in New York City, United States, with 79 offices in 44 countries. Hill & Knowlton was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1927 by John W. Hill and is today led by Chairman & CEO, Paul Taaffe...
resorted to atrocity propaganda during the 1990/91 Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
when it spread the story that the Iraqi soldiers who had invaded Kuwait were ripping helpless Kuwaiti babies from hospital incubators.
Corpse Factory story
In his textbook and in other writings, Marlin examines a specific example of World War I atrocity propaganda to illustrate propaganda techniques. The Corpse Factory storyKadaververwertungsanstalt
The Kadaververwertungsanstalten , also sometimes called the "German Corpse-Rendering Works" or "Tallow Factory" was one of the most notorious British anti-German propaganda efforts of World War I....
incited hatred and loathing of Germans who were supposedly "boiling their own dead soldiers to extract from their bodies lubricating oil, fats, soap, glue, glycerine for explosives, bonemeal for animal feed, and fertilizer." According to Marlin's research, the story was likely concocted by British and Belgian propagandists in London and then spread far and wide beginning on April 17, 1917 by the Times and the Daily Mail, newspapers owned by Lord Northcliffe
Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe rose from childhood poverty to become a powerful British newspaper and publishing magnate, famed for buying stolid, unprofitable newspapers and transforming them to make them lively and entertaining for the mass market.His company...
, a man with close connections to British propaganda.
The Northcliffe papers gave the story credibility by combining a mistranslated report from a German newspaper about dead horses being boiled down for glue, with an invented story, ostensibly from Belgian newspapers, quoting a detailed, eyewitness description of dead German soldiers being dumped into a huge cauldron at a "Corpse Exploitation Establishment." Other news media spread the gruesome story worldwide.
Propaganda techniques
Marlin writes that the Corpse Factory story illustrates the seven requirements for effective propaganda outlined in the 1938 book Propaganda Boom by A.J. Mackenzie. Those requirements are:- Repetition: The Northcliffe papers kept the story going day after day by publishing readers' letters.
- Colour: The eyewitness description of the corpse factory appealed to readers' imaginations.
- Kernel of truth: The Germans did have plants to boil down animal carcasses.
- Slogans: The story gave support to such propaganda slogans as "The Germans are ghouls."
- Specific objective: The story incited hatred of the Germans and encouraged people to join in the fight against them.
- Concealed motive: Publishing reports from "foreign" papers obscured the source of the propaganda.
- Timing: The mistranslated German report on the animal rendering plant coincided with the concocted Belgian corpse factory report.
According to Marlin and Joachim Neander, the Corpse Factory story also illustrates other propaganda techniques including the use of deceptive language, appeal to emotion
Appeal to emotion
Appeal to emotion is a potential fallacy which uses the manipulation of the recipient's emotions, rather than valid logic, to win an argument. The appeal to emotion fallacy uses emotions as the basis of an argument's position without factual evidence that logically supports the major ideas endorsed...
and the Big Lie
Big Lie
The Big Lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." Hitler asserted the technique was...
. They write that after the story was exposed as false in 1925, people were determined not to be fooled again. Thus, many doubted reports about the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
early in World War II—testimony to the long-lasting and harmful effects of atrocity propaganda.
Two propaganda theorists
Marlin makes it clear in Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, that George OrwellGeorge Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
and Jacques Ellul
Jacques Ellul
Jacques Ellul was a French philosopher, law professor, sociologist, lay theologian, and Christian anarchist. He wrote several books about the "technological society" and the interaction between Christianity and politics....
strongly influenced his own writing. He refers to both thinkers as major propaganda theorists "who sought to expose the forces at work integrating an individual into a larger system and frustrating an individual's self-development and freedom."
George Orwell
Marlin credits Orwell with effectively and passionately exposing the enslaving effects of propagandistic language. He points to NewspeakNewspeak
Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it refers to the deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state. Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained...
, the language Orwell invented in his satirical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
to illustrate how words could reinforce the totalitarian
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
power of a police state
Police state
A police state is one in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population...
by eradicating historical memory and narrowing the range of thought.
Marlin also refers to Orwell's famous 1946 essay Politics and the English Language
Politics and the English Language
"Politics and the English Language" is an essay by George Orwell criticizing "ugly and inaccurate" contemporary written English.Orwell said that political prose was formed "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed...
which describes, for example, how a euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
such as pacification served to cover up state violence and murder. "The extraordinary thing," Marlin notes, "is that exactly the same word for exactly the same kind of activity was used in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
many years later."
Marlin writes that Orwell showed how the owners of weekly magazines used adventure stories and comics to transmit capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and imperialist
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
values partly through the repeated use of class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
and national stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s. He observes that "the most effective propaganda is not recognized as such, and its message is often best presented obliquely."
Jacques Ellul
"There is probably no other thinker who has thought as deeply about propaganda in all its dimensions and ramifications as Jacques Ellul," Marlin writes. "What sets him apart from other analysts is his rare if not unique combination of expertise in history, sociologySociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, law, and political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, along with careful study of biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
writings." Marlin adds that for Ellul, propaganda is a technique that promotes acceptance of other techniques in a mass society where people are routinely victims of the illusion that technology will solve all our problems. Thus, propaganda is needed to adjust people to conditions imposed by technological development --- conditions that may require them to adapt to the increasingly inescapable requirements of the technological system. Elsewhere, Marlin has argued that the large and powerful vested interests that benefit from what he calls "the technological system" generate systematic propaganda glorifying technology. In a review of Ellul's book The Technological Bluff, Marlin comments on "the obscene way in which American television lavished praise on smart bombs
Precision-guided munition
A precision-guided munition is a guided munition intended to precisely hit a specific target, and to minimize damage to things other than the target....
" during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
"paying little attention to the human suffering they caused."
Marlin explains that for Ellul, propaganda is founded on the governing myths of a society. These include the myths of work, happiness, the nation, youth and the hero. Ellul sees such myths as "pre-propaganda" because they lay the groundwork for active propaganda campaigns. Marlin points out that Ellul's concept of "sociological propaganda" is similar in that it also provides the basis for more overt propaganda campaigns. He writes that the notion of an "American way of life
American way
The American way of life is an expression that refers to the lifestyle of people living in the United States of America. It is an example of a behavioral modality, developed from the 17th century until today...
", for example, provides a sociological backdrop for active propaganda. "Once one accepts the American way of life as superior, it becomes a criterion of good and evil; things that are un-American become evil," Marlin writes.
Aside from Ellul's work on propaganda and technology, Marlin has also written appreciatively about the French thinker's theological
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
studies. His 1986 review of Ellul's Money and Power, for example, concludes that it contains "a wealth of insight" adding, "[a]s Roman Catholics we have much to learn, and relearn, from this book. Marlin notes Ellul's belief that money predisposes people to neglect their primary obligation toward God. "The real question," Marlin writes, "is whether wealth or the prospect of attaining it is the dominant force in our lives. Any time we subordinate human considerations to narrow economic exchange relationships --- ignoring the fact that cost-savings programmes
Austerity
In economics, austerity is a policy of deficit-cutting, lower spending, and a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided. Austerity policies are often used by governments to reduce their deficit spending while sometimes coupled with increases in taxes to pay back creditors to...
cause widespread unemployment, for example --- we reveal a preoccupation with the wrong standpoint. Our heart is after the wrong treasure."
David Levine affair
In 1998, Marlin published a book analyzing the uproar over the appointment of David LevineDavid Levine (medical administrator)
David Levine is a health administrator from Ottawa, Canada.Bachelor in Civil Engineering, McGill University, Master in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, England, Master's degree in Health Administration from the University of Montreal.In 1998 he was...
as administrator of The Ottawa Hospital
The Ottawa Hospital
The Ottawa Hospital or L'Hôpital d'Ottawa is a major, non-profit, public, university teaching hospital in Ottawa made up of the former Grace Hospital, Riverside Hospital, Ottawa General Hospital and Ottawa Civic Hospital. It is a 1,195-bed academic health sciences centre...
, an amalgamation of the Ottawa General, founded by French-speaking Roman Catholic nuns, and the Ottawa Civic which, although officially non-denominational, was regarded as a Protestant, predominantly English-speaking institution. Levine, who was fluently bilingual, had 15 years experience running hospitals in Montreal. He had also served as president of the Canadian Association of Teaching Hospitals. However, in 1979, Levine had run unsuccessfully as a candidate for the separatist Parti Québécois
Parti Québécois
The Parti Québécois is a centre-left political party that advocates national sovereignty for the province of Quebec and secession from Canada. The Party traditionally has support from the labour movement. Unlike many other social-democratic parties, its ties with the labour movement are informal...
in a Quebec provincial election and he had campaigned in favour of Quebec's sovereignty in the provincial referendum of 1980. At the time of his appointment to the $330,000 hospital administrator's job in Ottawa, Levine was working as the Parti Québécois government's representative in New York.
After the news of Levine's appointment broke on May 1, 1998, outraged readers wrote record numbers of letters to Ottawa newspapers and flooded radio phone-in shows with angry calls. Both of Ottawa's major newspapers, the Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa Citizen
The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Canada. According to the Canadian Newspaper Association, the paper had a 2008 weekly circulation of 900,197.- History :...
and the Ottawa Sun
Ottawa Sun
The Ottawa Sun is a daily tabloid newspaper in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is published by Sun Media. It was first published in the early 1980s as the Ottawa Sunday Herald, until it was acquired by Toronto Sun Publishing Corporation in 1988....
, published editorials and columns condemning Levine's appointment and calling on him to resign. On May 19, 1998, the "hurricane of protest" drew national attention when a boisterous crowd confronted the hospital's board of directors in an Ottawa auditorium expressing "unmitigated fury" and referring to Quebec separatists as "anti-Canadians,
bastards." In the end, the hospital board refused to fire Levine and after about a month, the public anger subsided.
In his analysis of the affair, Marlin criticizes the Ottawa media for fanning the flames of protest in their competitive pursuit of higher circulations and audience ratings. He also argues that although Canadians tend to regard McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
as a feature of U.S. political life, the Levine affair contained its basic ingredients -- "a strident patriotism, which reduced complex questions to a simple us-and-them mentality." He adds: "We are dealing not just with a local issue, but with a problem that is at the core of the Canadian unity debate. The Levine affair is a microcosm of suspicion, mistrust and misunderstanding that could someday be repeated on a larger scale with worse consequences."
About 200 people turned out in November, 1998 when Marlin launched his book on the Levine affair at an Ottawa Chapters
Chapters
Chapters is a Canadian big box bookstore banner owned by Indigo Books and Music. Formerly a company in its own right competing with Indigo, the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001.-History:...
store. According to a report in the Ottawa Citizen, many heckled the author, objecting to his contention that Levine's political views were irrelevant to his work as a hospital administrator. The report added: "As some members of the crowd became more hostile, Mr. Marlin demanded to know if a heckler had read his book. When the man answered no, Mr. Marlin shouted back: 'It's typical of the prejudice I'm trying to fight.' The arguing continued for a lengthy time and then the heckler approached Mr. Marlin and whispered, 'I have two sons, and I'll never send them to Carleton because of people like you.'"