Authoritarian Propaganda in Education and Media Research Paper

Introduction

The world has a fair share of authoritarian regimes. The recent “Arab Spring” witnessed in the Arab countries renewed the conversation regarding the topic of dictatorial rule. Authoritarianism became unpopular in the world after the Second World War, following the collapse of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini’s regimes. Democracy reigned afterward, where leaders would ascend to power through an election. Their stay in power was limited. Nevertheless, various countries have continued to be led by authoritarian leaders, decades into the twenty-first century. Education and the media are the most effective among these mechanisms. Through education and media, the government spreads propaganda and extreme patriotism views with the aim of weakening the dissidents while asserting the need for obedience to the laid down policies.

The question that people often ask themselves is, ‘how do authoritarian regimes get away with violence, torture, and oppression?’ Most of the citizens in countries led by authoritarians often seem to be in agreement with the government of the day. Nationwide protests and rebellion against an authoritarian government are occasionally witnessed in authoritarian governments. This paper examines the effectiveness of the mechanisms mentioned above, namely media and education, in perpetuating extremist patriotism to ‘demonize’ dissidents in favor of the authoritarian rule. These two major tools are used to spread propaganda against those who are opposing the government for them to be viewed as the enemy. In addressing media, this paper will discuss the various forms of media that are available for use by these regimes, namely, newspapers, press, and social media. Education, for its part, involves aspects such as music, national anthems, poetry, and curriculums that teach extreme patriotism. Authoritarian governments use half-truths to weaken nonconformists by demonizing the legitimacy of their (nonconformists) activities, a situation that makes them fail to obtain any meaningful following from the citizenry.

Concepts

This section defines key concepts and terminologies that are relevant to this paper.

State Violence

According to Tambar, state violence refers to the systematic use of aggression by the present government to create fear among its citizenry with the aim of propagating a particular political agenda.¹ Aspects of state violence include, but are not limited to, torture, murder, and repression.²

Torture

Dolan presents torture as the act of inflicting pain on people as a form of punishment or with the intention of forcing them to do or refrain from doing something.³ Authoritarian governments are known to employ torture tactics to systematically silence their dissidents.

Repression

Malinowski defines repression as the action of suppressing people using force.⁴ It may include threats, violence, or simply suppressive policies. Repressive actions by the authoritarian government may include deliberate voter suppression, kidnapping, and the assassination of dissidents. Therefore, repression points to any form of disenfranchisement against the citizens, which is propagated by the state machinery.⁵

Authoritarian Regimes

An authoritarian regime is a government that controls power by keeping it away from the rule of the majority for people not to have a say in leadership.⁶

Patriotism

According to Qian, patriotism is loosely defined as the love for one’s country or the feeling of pride associated with belonging to a given country.⁷

Legitimacy

Legitimacy is the authenticity or lawfulness of something. For a government, legitimacy refers to its acceptance by the people as being rightly in power. Therefore, as Weber observes, legitimacy involves shared beliefs that seek to validate the government based on traditional, charismatic, or legal grounds.⁸

Propaganda

Propaganda refers to any biased information, which is spread with the intention of misleading the audience about a particular subject or point of view, as Pufleau reveals.⁹ It is a set of methods utilized by an organized group to bring massive participation of the individuals in their cause by manipulating them psychologically.

Theoretical Framework

This study is based on the works of various authors regarding the authoritarian rule. Michel Foucault has written about repression, power, discipline, and punishment.¹⁰ Hanna Arendt wrote about evil and repression with the aim of showing how the two elements play out in authoritarian regimes. Max Weber, for his part, discussed legitimacy, including how authoritarian governments enforce it using force.¹¹ Finally, according to Arendt, Antonio Gramsci wrote on the subject of hegemony.¹²

In his repression hypothesis, Foucault took the view that human beings are freer in relation to the way they believe about their level of liberation.¹³ Radical politics and psychoanalytic thoughts are used to make people believe that their freedom is curtailed in a way that true freedom can only occur through breaking away from the system. However, this conception of power also prevents people from foreseeing the possibility of radical change in the near future.¹⁴ In a sense, the repression hypothesis considers and presents power in a negative version, a strategy that people deploy to oppress others. This perception of power is in line with the manner by which authoritarian rules function.

Regarding power, Foucault took the view that subjects cannot exercise power because they are merely passive objects created by the power, as Ball observes.¹⁵ In essence, Foucault was presenting the citizens of a country as powerless before the government. In democracies, while people can have considerable input in the government, the input of the people does not count in authoritarian leadership. Domination results in an asymmetrical relationship where the ‘dominated people’ have a limited planning opportunity because their liberty is greatly restricted to the extent that it becomes difficult to challenge the government. Foucault also described “technologies of government” as tools used by those in power to systemize, even out, and control its power.¹⁶ On the subject of discipline and punishment, Foucault wrote that the modern prison was invented not to correct offenders but to propagate the culture of subjection as O’Brien asserts.¹⁷ Crime and rebellion are perceived as a declaration of war against the government and hence the use of force to confront those who perpetuate them.¹⁸ In its response to crime and rebellion, the autocratic government is interested in identifying and attacking its enemies, rather than enforcing the law.

Hanna Arendt discussed political evil by arguing that authoritarian governments arise from the notion of a novel leadership that is built on fear and ideological fiction.¹⁹ According to Arendt, terror is the tool used by illegal administrations to pressurize the citizens to be aware of them (governments).²⁰ The more coercive force a government uses, the more questionable the legitimacy of its power becomes.²¹ Therefore, Arendt proposed the metric of non-violence to determine the legitimacy of a government. Capitalism has resulted in the concentration of economic power that could be used by the bourgeoisie to suppress the majority with the view of furthering their (bourgeoisie) interests.²² The authoritarian rule works by destroying public participation of people in political affairs. As such, it is anti-politics. The use of force is by itself an admission by the government that it is no longer in control of its people.

Max Weber wrote about legitimacy, arguing that the force keeps any government in power.²³ When people perceive the government as legitimate, they are unlikely to revolt. Weber classified legitimacy into three categories, namely, legal power, traditional supremacy, and charismatic superiority. He further identified two basic components of social organizations, which included authority and norms. Norms depend on one’s orientation to a certain principle while authority requires individuals to obey commands.²⁴ Authoritarian rulers depend on the latter (authority) to govern their subjects by using repression when necessary. According to Weber, the ability to use physical force distinguishes political leadership from other forms of leadership.²⁵ Therefore, if the use of force by the government is justified, it does not constitute terror or repression. According to Couto, the government of the day may seek to assert its right to use violence by invoking any one or more of the three forms of authority (traditional, charismatic, or legal).²⁶

As Mouffe observes, Antonio Gramsci for his part discussed hegemony where he described capitalist states as consisting of two spheres that overlap.²⁷ These two spheres are political culture and civil society. For political society, force is used to make people obey commands and laws put in place by those in power.²⁸ On the other hand, the civil society constitutes the public sphere where ideas and beliefs are shaped.²⁹ Gramsci recognized the media, educational institutions, and religious organizations as tools within the society that are used by authoritarian governments to acquire consent and legitimacy from the people.³⁰ Gramsci also believed that a direct revolutionary struggle would most likely fail if it were not preceded by a ‘war of position.’³¹ War of position refers to a change in ideas and beliefs, which Gramsci viewed as the effective way to create a new hegemony. Therefore, the theory advanced by Gramsci agrees with the common understanding that education and media are often used by the state to further its interests through propaganda.

Literature Review

The Arab uprisings in 2011 led to a manipulation of the media by the affected governments. As a result, the public formed independent media channels to incite the public against the regimes. According to Lynch, these media channels brought together activists while at the same time ensuring that citizens aired their views without government control.³² Authoritarian governments have used the media and the education sector to stamp out their legitimacy. State and non-state groups have relied on traditional and the modern media for decades to get away with torture and repression.

During Saparmurat’s reign as the president of Turkmenistan, he published a book labeled “The Soul Book.” As Meurs observes, the essence was for the public to be used it to paint the government and country in a positive image, both locally and internationally.³³ Through its media wing, Al Shabaab has produced movies aimed at stamping its authority in Somalia. The strategy has gained the group praise for being technologically well-informed, thus earning international recognition and ‘legitimacy.’ According to Weimann, some of the radio stations run by Al-Shabaab include Somali Wayen Radio FM, Radio Al-Andalus, and Karim Radio FM among others.³⁴

States are known to launch a terrorist attack to force the civilians into submission.³⁵ After the Mexican revolution, an authoritarian government was formed. In a bid to prove its legitimacy, government-sponsored textbooks were offered to public schools.³⁶ As Dominguez observes, the civilians interpreted this move to mean that the government had good intentions, thus gaining wide appreciation.³⁷ The Venezuelan president, Daniel Lanasberg, implemented measures meant to dissuade independent newspapers from revealing the effects of capitalism.³⁸ This strategy was accomplished by denying them access to favorable currency exchange rates, thus making the printing of papers expensive. In Turkey, the government resorted to using pro-government outlets to get away with repression. According to Ludwig, government contracts were given to the pro-government media outlets.³⁹

The Bahai community in Iran has received great opposition from the government for various reasons. First, the Bahai people are seen to have been supporters of the Shah regime that consisted of opponents of the current administration. Secondly, they are seen as Israel’s’ spies who pose a security risk to Iran. Thirdly, they are accused of perpetuating an Islamic ideology that is not consistent with the Shia Islam. In Iran, the government controls the school curriculum to develop falsehoods, stereotypes, and misconceptions among the public.⁴⁰

As a result, any information regarding the evils advanced against the Bahai International Community is filled with misinformation and bias.⁴¹ Iran runs state-controlled media houses that issue falsehoods about the Bahai community. According to Knight, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatolla Ali Khameni, issued a fatwa that sought to depict the Bahai community as a misleading sect that was perpetrating violence against the government.⁴² Being a predominantly Islamic state, the government of Iran depicted the Bahais as an ignorant faction that disregarded Islamic beliefs, thus inciting the public to hold demonstrations against the government.⁴³

As Guriev and Treisman argue, dictators often ensure that they feed the media with propaganda meant to convince the public of their competency in leadership.⁴⁴ They also resort to bribing the few informed individuals. The government also censors all the messages sent by the elite individuals to reduce the chances of having an informed public. The revolutions experienced in the Arab countries have been costly due to the government’s use of police as tools of repression.⁴⁵ Despite ousting several leaders who exercised authoritarianism, democracy was not achieved. Instead, authoritarianism was restored.⁴⁶ Through censorship, governments regulate the information relayed to the public. Stockman reveals how China allocates a huge portion of its budget to censor the internet in a bid to avert any possible opposition towards the government.⁴⁷

During the Fujimori regime in Peru, $36 million was paid to leading media houses to skew the information relayed to the public.⁴⁸ Journalists who did not adhere to the regulations were prosecuted and later imprisoned for inciting the public. Sometimes, governments lure friendly investors to buy out independent media houses. Thus, the investors become susceptible to control mechanisms.⁴⁹ During the Arab uprisings, governments bought out media channels that were used by the demonstrators to launch attacks against them. As a result, the media houses that were deemed to help in ousting the governments engaged in partisan politics whereby they served the government.⁵⁰ As a result, the media contributed not only to mounting pressure on the government but also contributed to the failure of the uprisings.

Citizens may feel oppressed by a regime. However, they may find it difficult to oppose because of media houses relaying information meant to portray the government positively. On the other hand, the leadership will use all means to ensure that media houses continue relaying skewed information for their benefits.⁵¹ Because of the concerted efforts between the media houses and the leadership, the public may not discern the truth from mere propaganda. Stockman asserts that governments use censorship and propaganda to prevent the public from mounting opposition against the administration.⁵²

The Ukrainian crisis painted Russia to the international community in bad light. However, the Russians viewed President Putin as a hero. In turn, he won the hearts of many people. After the annexation of Crimea, the Russian government embarked on propaganda as a means of promoting its civilization approaches as Shakhrai reveals.⁵³ In the Arab countries, Ferguson claims that Al Jazeera, which was deemed an advocate for human rights, was soon broadcasting information that supported the interests of state actors.⁵⁴ Media sectors that were controlled by the state worked hard to ensure that the uprisings did not succeed. Consequently, businessmen who were eyeing political seats started television stations and relayed government-controlled information.

In attempting to illustrate the role played by the media in the Arab uprisings, Lynch asserts that between 1970 and 1980, state-controlled media stations and censorship were methods used by governments to exercise dominance.⁵⁵ Despite independent media channels such as BBC and VOA, national media remained the broadcasting channels favored by many individuals. Foreign-owned media posed competition to the state-controlled media houses, a situation that resulted in modernization and adaptation.

Students have also accused schools of using dubious means to achieve conformity. According to Strauss, under the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act, Hall was accused of influencing test scores in the Atlanta Public Schools.⁵⁶ Through the collaboration with school leaders and teachers, Hall ensured that all students had an indication of academic improvement. Lorenzo Garcia was committed to imprisonment for denying low-performing students the chance to take the state test. This move is an indication that the education system can be susceptible to external influence such as being used to further an authoritarian cause.⁵⁷

Countering the Argument: Tackling the Authoritarian Regimes Mechanism of Repression

Authoritarian leadership succeeds because the people are comfortable with such a regime. As Weber observed, the legitimacy of any government is derived from the people. According to Svolik, the subjects who view authoritarian regimes as an effective form of government generally accept the way such governments are run.⁵⁸ Authoritarian leaders succeed in silencing dissidents through repression and propaganda. The result of this move is that the government can get things done without unnecessary opposition. Therefore, this form of leadership is more effective in implementing tasks because there is little opposition. The democratic process is not suitable for projects that need to be dispensed with urgency because of the bureaucratic structures that have been put in place to decentralize power. By forging legitimacy, autocratic leaders create formidable governments that are immune to opposition. This plan is a show of strength on the part of the autocratic leader.

The media is an important component of any leadership, especially an authoritarian rule. Propaganda is imperative to keep the government going in the face of insurmountable opposition. By regulating the kind of information that its citizenry has access to, authoritarian leaders maintain the legitimacy of their power. The dissidents thereby find it difficult to influence the citizens against the authoritarian leadership because they have already been subjected to cultural obedience through propaganda.⁵⁹ This situation can be seen as a way of ensuring that harmony is achieved in the society by reducing conflict. Weber argues that the government can use force to enforce its legitimacy, as long as it is justified.⁶⁰

President Saparmurat’s case provides a good example of how poetry can be used to reinforce an authoritarian rule. Saparmurat ruled Turkmenistan between 1990 and 2006 as an authoritarian during which he published the “Soul Book,” a propaganda tool for his government.⁶¹ Through the book, Saparmurat was able to conceal the evils of his reign, instead of replacing them with an image of a harmonious and culturally robust nation. Autocratic leaders perfect the art of propaganda since it is a source of legitimacy for their otherwise unpopular governments. In Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat went as far as ensuring that the book became a source of interview questions for those who were seeking government employment.⁶² It was being taught in schools as part of the curriculum for most of Saparmurat’s regime. The strategy was a case of propagating extreme patriotism to enforce government legitimacy. Authoritarian rulers will “brainwash” their subjects if such methods have to be used for them to remain in power.

Music is another tool used by autocratic leaders to hold on to power. It is an effective way of spreading propaganda because of its ability to appear inoffensive. According to Pufleau, music is regarded as a tool that is made with good intentions.⁶³ Therefore, people are less suspecting of the underlying intention to repress them through extremist ideas. Importantly, just like poetry, music can carry different meanings, depending on the interpretation of the audience. This situation serves the purpose of spreading propaganda in a seemingly harmless manner.⁶⁴ Autocratic leaders pay colossal amounts of money to musicians to create songs that propagate their cause.

In 2014, Muedini reveals how Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, sponsored a music video that was in support of his authoritarian regime.⁶⁵ At the time, Algeria was staring at the possibility of a civilian rebellion amid the Arab Spring. Music is also effective because many people can access it. In other words, according to Macías, more people listen to music, as opposed to reading books or watching news channels.⁶⁶ When General Francisco Franco rose to power as the new autocratic ruler of Spain in the early 1940s, he targeted to use music to legitimize his regime as Johnson reveals.⁶⁷ According to Avital, Hitler also placed great importance on music to promote his fascist ideology and his government-sponsored musicians.⁶⁸

Conclusion

Modern dictatorships depend on their ability to effectively utilize propaganda to prevent rebellion. This propaganda is spread through education and the media. Through education, the government spreads ideologies that support extreme patriotism in an effort to legitimize the administration. The media for its part is used to publish information according to how the government wants it to be viewed by the citizens. Repression is also used to ensure that people do not engage in a meaningful rebellion. People condone authoritarian leadership because they do not possess the mechanism to organize an effective rebellion. In addition, through the spread of propaganda, the government is able to create a culture of obedience, which makes the people view the particular administration as legitimate. Therefore, the majority of the people are not willing to join in a concerted effort to remove the regime. The fear of repercussion is another reason why the people do not oppose an authoritarian rule. Authoritarian governments initiate state violence and torture against their enemies to suppress the future opposition.

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Footnotes

1. Kabir Tambar, Brotherhood in Dispossession: State Violence and the Ethics of Expectation in Turkey (California: Stanford University, 2016), 31.
2. Tambar, 33.
3. Chris Dolan, Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 338.
4. Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (London: Routledge, 2013), 10.
5. Malinowski, 11.
6. Dolan, 338.
7. He Qian, “Anti-Stamp Act Crisis and Early Transforming “Patriotism” in Colonial America,” Journal of Historical Science 9, no. 1, (2015): 13.
8. Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (London: Routledge, 2013), 12.
9. Luis, Pufleau, Reflections on Music and Propaganda (Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, 2014), 31.
10. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (New York: Vintage, 2012), 37.
11. Weber, 13.
12. Hannah Arendt, Antisemitism: Part One of the Origins of Totalitarianism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 12.
13. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (New York: Vintage, 2012), 31.
14. Foucault, 33.
15. Stephen Ball, Foucault, Power, and Education (London: Routledge, 2012), 27.
16. Ball, 28.
17. Patricia O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 16.
18. O’Brien, 17.
19. Arendt, 12.
20. Arendt, 11.
21. Arendt, 13.
22. Arendt, 12.
23. Weber, 11.
24. Weber, 12.
25. Weber, 13.
26. Richard Couto, “The Politics of Terrorism: Power, Legitimacy, and Violence,” Integral Review 6, no. 1 (2016): 63.
27. Chantal Mouffe, Gramsci and Marxist Theory (RLE: Gramsci) (London: Routledge, 2014), 8.
28. Mouffe, 9.
29. Mouffe, 8.
30. Mouffe, 10.
31. Mouffe, 11.
32. Marc Lynch, “How the Media Trashed the Transitions,” The Arab Uprisings Explained 26, no. 4 (2014), 94.
33. Hendrik Meurs, “Staging Legitimacy: Mechanisms for Power Retention in Turkmenistan,” OSCE Yearbook 1, no. 1, (2014): 128.
34. Gabriel Weimann, New Terrorism and New Media (New York: University of New York Press, 2014), 21.
35. Lynch, 95.
36. Lynch, 96.
37. Jorge Dominguez, Chapter Twenty. The Perfect Dictatorship? South Korea versus Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico (Boston: American Political Science Association), 15.
38. Dominguez, 19.
39. Jessica Ludwig, “Beyond Propaganda: How Authoritarians Disrupt the Global Information Space,” Resurgent Dictatorship. Web.
40. Ludwig, para. 2.
41. Ludwig, para. 5.
42. Nauzanin Knight, State Terrorism in Iran: Understanding the Case of the Iranian Bahá’i Community (London: Routledge, 2014), 20.
43. Knight, 20.
44. Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, How Modern Dictators Survive: Cooptation, Censorship, Propaganda, and Repression (Washington: Center for Economic Policy Research, 2015), 25.
45. Guriev and Treisman, 23.
46. Guriev and Treisman, 26.
47. Daniela Stockman, Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 14.
48. Dominguez, 19.
49. Guriev and Treisman, 30.
50. Stockman, 16.
51. Guriev and Treisman, 32.
52. Stockman, 16.
53. Ina Shakhrai, “The Legitimization of Authoritarian Rule through Constructed External Threats: Russian Propaganda during the Ukrainian crisis,” East European Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2015), 30.
54. Henry Ferguson, Partisanship in the Media: A Comprehensive Look at the History and Potential for Bias in News Media (California: Santa Clara University, 2016), 16.
55. Marc Lynch, The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East (New York: Public Affairs, 2013), 14.
56. Valerie Strauss, “A Warning to U.S. about ‘Educational Authoritarianism’ — from a Chinese Scholar,” The Washington Post, Web.
57. Strauss, para. 4.
58. Milan Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 23.
59. Svolik, 22.
60. Couto, 63.
61. Meurs, 128.
62. Meurs, 129.
63. Pufleau, 32.
64. Pufleau, 32.
65. Fait Muedini, “Algeria: Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Sufism, and Authoritarianism,” in Sponsoring Sufism 2015, ed. Fait Muedini (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 46.
66. Atzimba Macías, “The Music that is Here to Stay: New Rules in State-Society,” Revolutionizing the Interaction between State and Citizens through Digital Communications 1, no. 1 (2014): 146.
67. Anthony Johnson, “Made in Spain: Studies in Popular Music,” IASPM Journal 5, no. 2 (2015): 76.
68. Moshe Avital, “The Role of Songs and Music during the Holocaust,” Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy 31, no. 1 (2012): 53.