From “Shock and Awe” to Schadenfreude:
A Closer Look at War, Media, and Propaganda

Jim Noland
Purdue University Calumet

Yahya Kamalipour and Nancy Snow, Eds. War Media and Propaganda: A Global Perspective. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 2004. 280 p. $29.95 paper (ISBN: 0-7425-3563-0).

Having reached the fifth-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, much of the American media tended to focus, as expected, on memorial services and a seemingly endless montage of disparaging 9/11 footage.  Yet, on this fifth-year anniversary, after revisiting Yahya Kamalipour and Nancy Snow’s War, Media, and Propaganda, I contend that much of its content remains relevant today and insightful for those who wish to look beyond the endless ruminations and speculations provided on the anniversary of that horrible day.

War, Media, and Propaganda, a collaboration of 24 essays on precisely that: war, media and propaganda, seems at its best in its representation of other national perspectives, often marginalized in the West, and in providing some sorely needed psychological context in how Americans view, and define, propaganda.  The book also illustrates seemingly nefarious, documented tactics of media dominance perpetuated by government agencies.

Though not cited specifically as a tactic of media dominance, Ronald Paul Larson’s article Anatomy of a Bonding stands out.  Larson illustrates one implicit tactic of media dominance, intimacy building between journalists and their subjects.  Larson describes his experience as an embedded reporter; sometimes recalling scenes of emotional bonding to a nauseating degree.  Naturally, one would expect amiability between American journalists and American soldiers in war.  Nonetheless when depended upon for safety as an embedded reporter (p. 130), further emotional bonding seems inevitable.  Larson cites several first-hand accounts of this process and his struggle to keep his journalistic objectivity.  Yet, toward the end of this piece, objectivity seems betrayed as he characterizes his departure form his unit in the most saccharine way; by likening it to leaving summer-camp friends (p. 130).

The most insightful contributions in this book come from Karim H. Karim’s War, Propaganda, and Islam in Western Sources and Mahboub E. Hashem’s War on Iraq and Media Coverage.

Karim highlights many internal inconsistencies in Western perceptions of Islam.  This is especially true regarding moral justifications for going to war, and Karim provides an interesting comparison between Jihad, meaning “effort in the cause of God,” and Christian “just war” theory.  Both of these concepts draw from a shared Davidic code of law (p. 109).  Karim also succeeds in explicating the historic background through which the West views Islam.  For instance, Karim cites the etymological origins of the word “assassin” deriving from the word “hashish” (p.113).  In popular medieval mythology, Muslims were believed to be drugged with hashish to go about killing themselves in apparent suicide missions (p. 113).  Today, the core of this stereotype manifests itself in newly coined “Islamofacism.” All one needs to do is simply switch hashish for a similar euphoria-inducing surrogate: authoritarianism.  Any successful investigation to the efficacy of propaganda efforts must take historical context into account, and Karim describes this context well.

Unlike Karim, Mahboub E. Hashem in War on Iraq and Media Coverage focuses on the disparities between the ideology and action of U.S. foreign policy.  These disparities pertain to the perceived curious timing around when the U.S. chooses to enforce core ideals.  Commenting on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Hashem said, “He made Iraqis afraid of anyone, to a point where they had been afraid of their own shadows.  What amazes Arabs is that all of this was taking place with the United State’s blessing, until it stunned the world with its war to ‘liberate’ the Iraqi people” (p. 166).  However, Hashem also captures the ambiguity among the Iraqi people – angered at Arab rulers for not speaking out against Hussein’s atrocities, yet humiliated that a foreign power had to invade to overthrow Hussein (p. 166).

Leila Conners Petersen’s American Hegemony and the Culture of Death gives a sorely needed look at the psychological context cultivated in part by American popular culture.  Peterson’s article derives from findings in behavioral sciences, and she describes American culture as obsessed with schadenfreude: deriving pleasure from other’s pain (p. 102).  One wonders what impulse lurking in the depths of the American psyche drives such confused blood lust.  That is, aside from a conditioned, Skinner box effect resulting from repeated viewing of violent acts.  “In short, as Americans, we live stuck in a dual emotional state of being at once distanced from death but, at the same time, fearful of what we know not” (p. 103).  Though beyond the purview of her article, it would also be interesting to see what Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or Freud would have to say about American schadenfreude.

Observations of a strange coexistence of blood lust and the insistence of being sheltered from the realities of war crop up in Douglas Kellner’s in Spectacle and Media Propaganda in the War on Iraq.  Kellner doesn’t mince words. “The very brutality of FOX war pornography graphically displayed the horrors of war the militarist, gloating, and barbaric discourse that accompanied the slaughter of Iraqis, and the graphic destruction of the country showed the new barbarism that characterized the Bush era” (p. 74).  Yet concerning human faces behind the war pornography, Kellner cites embedded CNN reporter, Walter Rogers, and his recounting of the fact the only time his network aired footage of a dead Iraqi, the switchboard at CNN “lit up like a Christmas tree” with complaints (p. 74).  Although the adverse reaction could be explained by differences in viewing audiences between FOX and CNN, in light of the aforementioned contribution on American schadenfreude, this explanation seems less likely.   In any event, the cultural phenomenon surrounding the viewing habits of Americans on matters of war is a fascinating topic and worthy of further exploration.

In the most contentious article in the book, Barrie Zwicker’s America: The Fourth Reich, Zwicker treads the treacherous ground of coupling the events of 9/11 with the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich.  Though he does draw some unsettling comparisons of the 9/11 events to the Reichstag fire of 1933 and a similar recourse to “God’s will” for political expediency (p. 141); unfortunately, usually the case with Nazis invocations, the sheer force generated by such a gratuitous comparison becomes too irresistible and eventually pulls the author into hyperbole.  In this regard, Zwicker doesn’t disappoint. “The number and magnitude of anomalies surrounding 9/11 can point to only one conclusion: 9/11 was a completely made-in-the-USA inside job, a manufactured incident planned and run by some among the top leadership” (p. 142).  Though Zwicker provides a laundry list of anomalies to buttress his claim; it takes an inductive leap of faith to swallow Zwicker’s conclusion.  One hopes that in the passage of time, more evidence will emerge to definitively explain many of these anomalies that currently give fodder for conspiracy theorists.

Overall, War, Media, and Propaganda offers some food for thought and a needed platform for some of the more marginalized voices in the West.  For these reasons it’s worth your time.  This book would best serve as a starting point for honest debate concerning how Americans consume news, what forces shape Western perceptions of the Middle-East, and how an informed public can create more accountability for those guilty of having been duped into complicity with propaganda efforts.

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