Author: Nancy Snow. Propaganda, Inc.
Title: SELLING AMERICA'S CULTURE TO THE WORLD
Foreword by Herbert I. Schiller.
Introduction by Michael Parenti.
The Open Media Pamphlet Series.
Seven Stories Press, New York, 1998. 80 pp.
$8.50 Cdn, $5.95 US.
Reviewed by Rose A. Dyson *
This book offers a cogent analysis of U.S. foreign and
domestic policy since the beginning of the 20th century. In it
Nancy Snow takes us on an armchair tour through the headquarters
of the United States Information Agency. She begins by
introducing us to the work of its foreign branch. Coined as
"public diplomacy" its real function is worldwide dissemination
of propaganda designed for the purposes of influencing the
actions of human beings in ways that are compatible with American
corporate interests.
Its origins are traced back to the Creel Commission, set up
by President Wilson prior to World War I, as part of the national
strategy to gain popular support for U.S. entry into that war.
Apart from carefully crafted speeches made at home and abroad,
distribution of pamphlets and publications, poster displays and
advertisements in newspapers, the Hollywood film industry was
enlisted, with the help of legendary directors such as Cecil B.
DeMille, to rally anti-German support. As a result, American
journalist George Creel and his committee members successfully
launched the beginning of merged business and government
interests.
Snow's critique of the continuing corporate domination of
the USIA is based on firsthand experience in the Pentagon in the
early 1990s--both as a federal government sponsored graduate
student on a Fulbright Scholarship and then as the holder of a
freshly minted Ph.D. in international relations--when she was
hired to conduct cultural programs for the purpose of increasing
mutual understanding between the people of the U.S. and people of
other countries.
We are guided through dealmaking for the North American
Free Trade Agreement. Described as "trilateral education" between
the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, USIA input was designed to foster
harmonization of "values" between educational and cultural as
well as economic dimensions. In the beginning, scholarships
within universities proliferated with the objective of educating
what became known as "the NAFTA generation."
In the process, the Agency's early ideals for mutual
understanding between peoples of all countries took a back seat
to support and endorsement for U.S. led economic and cultural
dominance in the global economy. The shift away from a policy of
containment to a policy of free markets began with Ronald Reagan
in 1982. Under the Clinton administration, the USIA undertook a
new post-cold war propaganda emphasis on democracy and free
markets with the shift accelerating in the absence of any limits.
Fusion of foreign policy objectives between commerce,
culture, and U.S. national security meant that it became
increasingly necessary to justify educational and cultural
exchanges by linking their success to American business and
economic development goals. Snow's own preferences for cultural
democracy over economic priorities and national security
objectives ultimately led to rejection of this particular career
path within the federal bureaucracy in favour of education and
activism based on a critique of corporate based diplomacy.
The USIA's target audience, explains Snow, is upper class
business and professional elites who are often themselves agents
of the propaganda system. The American majority, or remaining
80-90 percent, assume the role of "the bewildered herd." They are
expected to go with the flow and not trouble themselves with
political and economic decisionmaking. Compliance of the herd is
achieved because it forms the target audience of the commercial
mass media through tabloid news, professional sports, and popular
television.
International outreach is achieved through broadcasting such
as Voice of America, Worldnet, the USIA Advisory Board for Cuba
Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, cultural exchange programs, and
the U.S.'s most popular exports--Hollywood movies and the myth
that the U.S. economy is a model for how other market economies,
both developed and less developed, can successfully adapt to the
global marketplace.
With the passage of NAFTA in 1993 the USIA emphasis on trade
and economics as its primary mission has led to a focus on the
use of communications technologies for new synergies between
public diplomacy and trade promotion. American business interests
abroad are now the paramount objectives.
The strategic plan for 1997-2003 includes the overlapping
goals of NATO expansion and the subsequent enlargement of markets
for U.S. arms manufacturers. Now, the terms "national security"
and "democracy" are used interchangeably with free enterprise and
free markets, ensuring the long term viability and survival of a
strong military-industrial complex.
American elections are perceived to be little more than
periodic endorsements of existing political leadership and
decisionmaking. Economic prosperity is defined as minimal
government regulation with intervention only in the form of tax
breaks and various forms of corporate welfare. The promotion of
"free" trade, a key tenet in the Clinton Doctrine, is predicated
on the belief that domestic strength is related to economic and
military leadership on a global basis.
The selling of NAFTA was considered by the USIA to have
been much more difficult in Mexico than in Canada although the
attitude toward Americans north of its border was perceived to be
"stubbornly ambivalent," particularly on the subject of American
cultural imperialism. One strategy for winning over Canadians
involved organized briefings for journalists from both countries
where "the full story" on free trade was presented. Another
involved the sponsorship of bilateral initiatives in the form of
university based conferences linking trade with the environment
and the information highway. Victory was declared by 1993 at
which time it was deemed prudent to halt USIA propaganda
promoting the benefits of economic interdependence through free
trade because of the pending federal election in Canada.
NAFTA passage through Congress was facilitated through the
lobbying efforts of an entity called The Wexler Group which
represented a coalition of Fortune 500 companies known as
USA*NAFTA. Snow notes that, despite USIA efforts, criticism of
NAFTA persists in all three countries as evidence of adverse
effects to cultural sovereignty and job security mounts while
corporate revenues climb. Despite documentation by the
independent media and various watchdog organizations on behalf
of the public interest, these adverse effects have resulted in
neither negative mainstream publicity nor political disfavour.
While evidence of environmental damage, job loss, and
eroding health inspections of produce crossing the Mexican border
have mounted, profits to 40 of the leading pro-NAFTA corporate
firms rose 335 percent between 1992 and 1996. General Electric
CEO Jack Welch, for example, garnered take-home pay in 1996
totalling $27 million in salary and bonuses.
Snow points toward the rising momentum of citizen's
coalitions opposing corporate front groups as a sign of the
dawning of a new internationalism. She calls for new directions
in U.S. global leadership on the side of workers, consumers, and
the environment. This, she says, will ultimately save global
capital from its own greedy excesses.
The book concludes with seven recommendations, one of them
that the USIA be dismantled entirely in an era of downsizing and
budget cuts. It has become, she says, an ineffective, obsolete
agency with no legitimate post cold war function, primarily
serving the interests of U.S. trade and economic sectors, touting
the superiority of U.S. commercial values and economic policies
to foreign elites in other countries including Canada.
Snow successfully manages to expose the hoax of private
hucksterism for U.S. business interests that masquerades under
the rhetoric of public diplomacy making a mockery of agency
mandates for mutual understanding between people of all nations.
As she and other colleagues frequently point out, government
policies which block two-way exchanges with other countries deny
Americans the opportunity to learn from other countries.
Partly because the USIA has always had a mandate prohibiting
the use of propaganda on its own people, most Americans have been
unaware of its activities. Now, the Internet offers possibilities
for new insights. She conveys the urgency for policy driven by
informed citizen activists and reviews the various road blocks
which must be removed first, beginning with electoral reform and
campaign funding from big business.
We are reminded of the extent to which people all over the
world find themselves faced increasingly with the new power of
global corporations which hold no allegiance to any one
individual, community, or country. Over half of the 100 largest
economies in the world today are no longer countries but
corporations. Ironically, while big governments everywhere are
being downsized, the power of global corporations grows,
reinforcing at an alarming pace the inevitability of global
corporate rule if it remains unchecked.
The book underscores the growing urgency for a better
informed worldwide citizenry, engaged by responsible purveyors of
news and information. If this is to happen, however, there is the
critical need to "take back the public airwaves" which are now
dominated by advertising-supported and profit-driven agendas.
Snow warns that opportunities from emerging digital technology
which offer new economic value within the total broadcasting
spectrum should not be overlooked.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, with appropriate
public prodding, could be persuaded to auction off licences to
private broadcasters. This would generate revenue for the federal
treasury which could be applied to more broadly based public
interest programming and should not be lost. What a great
example this would set for all federal regulators including the
Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission.
The issues here are of obvious significance and relevance,
not only to Americans but Canadians and other non-Americans as
well. The arguments made by leading Canadian opponents to "free"
trade and globalization put forth by David Orchard, Maude Barlow,
Tony Clarke, Linda McQuaig, John Ralston Saul, and others are
usefully reinforced. Greater attention to them would help
immeasurably in neutralizing frequent accusations of
"anti-Americanism" from proponents of unbridled corporate
domination on a global basis.
* Rose Dyson, Ed.D., is a Toronto based writer, researcher, and
consultant on media education, a member of the Executive
Committee of the Cultural Environment Movement and editor of the
CASAE Newsletter. Her email address is <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>--
Jay
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