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Propaganda Emails, Conflation, and "Proof of Abuse by Our Troops" - Part 2

Submitted by Ken Watts on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 17:36

LAST TIME I EXPLAINED THE USE, in political propaganda, of conflation as a technique for confusing, and winning over, the reader.

Conflation is the mistake, or, in the case of propaganda, the art of combining two different things under the same concept.

I used the example of an old riddle about a surgeon, which only worked because people had conflated the idea of a surgeon with the idea of a man: thus making it difficult for them to think about a woman surgeon.

Today I'm going to break down a real-life example of this kind of propaganda, and try to show just how it works.

It's an email that was forwarded to me, with the title:

Proof of "torture"??

The conflation begins right there.

Why is the word "torture" in quotations?

The clear implication, before you've even opened the email, is that the whole idea of "torture" is questionable, as well as any proof of it. There's also a subtle implication that someone is trying to "prove" that torture exists where it doesn't.

But what torture are we talking about?

There are, in fact, two quite different instances of U.S. torture in the public memory:

  1. The stunning and undeniable treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, performed by U.S. military in Iraq, and clearly documented by the shocking photos we all remember.

    No one has even hinted that this didn't happen, that there is any reason at all to put the word "torture" in quotes when referring to this instance.

    At the very most, the right-wing position has been that it was shocking and wrong, but that it was the work of a few "bad apples".

    In other words, the official right-wing line is to blame this one on the troops involved.
  2. "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" carried out with the admitted knowledge and consent of the White House at Guantanamo and elsewhere, such as waterboarding.

    The right-wing approach has been to put quotes around the word "torture" in these cases. They have argued that the techniques were not really torture at all.

The title of the email is not designed to make it clear which of these cases we are talking about—quite the contrary. It's designed to begin the process of conflating the two in our minds: of making us confuse them with each other and with ideas that really have no relation to torture at all.

After the title comes the first of several photos. It has a caption at the top:

Whatever you do just keep this going please!!!
It is always good to see pictures like these.
Proof of abuse by our Troops.

The first line is designed partly to get people to forward the email, but also to set up a certain note of urgency: "Whatever you do" and the !!! at the end.

The second line gives us the feeling that something heart warming is coming—which it is—and that the person sending the email is on the side of heartwarmingness. This very subtly suggests that whoever that someone is who's on the other side of this argument is against heartwarmingness.

The final line sets up the irony, and furthers the conflation: "Proof of abuse by our Troops".

Remember, the title began by tying together the right-wing argument that water-boarding, etc. wasn't really torture with the torture at Abu Ghraib. Now we are told, between the lines, that this nefarious someone thinks that there is proof of abuse by our Troops.

Hold on to your concepts here, because the email is already making the distinctions hard to follow.

Next time: some handy charts to help you sort it out...