When you google "Top 10 Most Dangerous Weapons in History," you get too many search results to count. There are types of guns that I've never heard of, atom bombs, an occasional flamethrower, some diseases from hundreds of years ago, and a grenade launcher. While these are all considered extremely deadly and have the capacity to kill in a split second, theres another weapon that did not make a single list but is just as dangerous as the others: propaganda.
For decades, the government has kept society under its thumb through the use of glorified brainwashing. The times in which we see this pattern emerge most are when the government is coincidentally on the verge of making millions, aka wartimes. Because of the massive amount of cash that rolls in from production during large scale fighting, the government has to do whatever it takes to justify their actions to the American people. Propaganda is the result. It comes in the form of speeches, news articles, ads on television, and often we don't even realize what it is or the effects it has on us. The biggest examples of this can be seen during the Spanish American War, Vietnam War, and the Iraq War.
Spanish American War
The Spanish American War broke out during a time when yellow journalism was consuming the world of press. Thus, a writers focus was more on getting a reaction from readers rather than providing them with accurate information. In turn, the government and journalists took this as an opportunity to advance agendas rather than help the country.
When the U.S.S. Maine, an American Naval ship docked in the Havana Harbor, sunk unexpectedly in 1898, rumors flooded newspapers across the country about its demise. Although it was determined to have sank due to mechanical malfunctions on board, headlines read otherwise. The government used the press to target the Spanish, claiming that they had attacked the Maine and
that war was the only answer to combat their actions. Alongside this scheme, they also constructed a series of articles that used Cuba as another excuse for the fight. They depicted the Cubans as weak individuals that needed to be saved by the Americans from the grasps of the Spanish. Both of these tactics, while substantially untruthful, swayed the public and the war against the Spanish commenced.
Vietnam War
Similarly to the Spanish American War, the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War was also predicated and advanced through false information from media releases. The Vietnam War was the first war to be fought simultaneously through the press. Both sides, the U.S. and Vietnam, used television, radio, and print to relay information rapidly about the progression of the fighting. While info was abundant, it wasn't always correct.
The U.S. had somewhat stayed out of the conflict in the west, until the Gulf of Tonkin incident. U.S. naval ships had been stationed in the gulf, blocking imports and exports to the mainland, when they claimed that Vietnamese ships had fired on the U.S. fleet. Just like the Spanish American War, the U.S. used this as an excuse to invade and attack.
The truth about the Gulf of Tonkin would be released years later, revealing that it was all a lie, an excuse to enter into war once again. But, the dishonesty and exaggerations wouldn't stop there. The press continued to assist the government, backing their ventures, by reporting on specific battles and their supposed significance. Skirmishes in Vietnam that were virtually insignificant were made out to be large scale bloody battles that resulted in devastating losses. The United States used this a coverup and dramatized explanation for why, in reality, they were losing the war horribly and as an excuse to continue fighting.
The real reason for entering the war was really because the United States' ego felt threatened. Communism was spreading in the West, and they wanted to ensure that their capitalistic reign would be able to continue without challenge. Yet, none of this was announced to the public.
Iraq War
The War in Iraq was started shortly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Because of the drastic nature of the event, the United States had to respond in a way that would maintain their image of power to the rest of the world. President Bush announced that there would be a "war against terrorism" and that the country would being going on the offensive against its opposers.
The role of the media in the war against Iraq changed the way that the press would function in the United States indefinitely. President Bush used journalists to not only advance the government's personal agenda, but to turn the entirety of the nation against another that, with the exception of a subsect of radicals, wanted nothing to do with a war against the U.S. This gave the nickname "Bush's PR War" to the war in Iraq.
Bush started by announcing that Iraq had WMDs, or weapons of mass destruction. He claimed that because they possessed such large and dangerous quantities, we had to strike first before they could attack us again. While this got the United States' foot in the door to start the fighting, it was the national fear that kept it going. Speeches given by the president, the press' full attention being put on the war, and continued releases of dramatized information kept the country on edge. No one wanted to see an event like 9/11 happen again, so they rallied behind the fight. Once again, it was later revealed that Iraq didn't have a single WMD and that they never had possessed the ability to even create one. But, it was too late. National sentiments had formed such a racist and stereotyped persona for their opposers that the damage had been already been done.
As we look closely at each of these examples, we can see a pattern: deception. We, as the public, have an innate habit of believing what we are told from those in positions of power. We blindly trust what the press releases, what the government says, and are willingly spoon fed lies. As a result, we have sacrificed the lives of millions of Americans so that the government and weapons distributors can take a paycheck. It leaves the question of what can we believe? What is real? Can we continue to trust the media, or will we be the ones to change the way the stories are written?
References:
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism#:~:text=Yellow%20journalism%20was%20a%20style,territory%20by%20the%20United%20States.
https://www.thoughtco.com/why-did-us-enter-vietnam-war-195158
Altheide, David L., and Jennifer N. Grimes. “War Programming: The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War.” The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 4, 2005, pp. 617–43, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121509. Accessed 7 Apr. 2022.
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-american-war-yellow-journalism-hearst-pulitzer
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43040494?seq=2
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiusJGxrYL3AhUSkHIEHSQaABAQFnoECEEQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fjournals.troy.edu%2Findex.php%2Ftest%2Farticle%2Fview%2F440%2F356&usg=AOvVaw1re1VFLF4foKKdsXmEN3_8
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