Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present Hardcover – 28 Jun 2003

Good solid research tool for students wanting info on propaganda. Not as many pictures as we had hoped, but very useful for our WWII and Vietnam War units. Students are always interested in how we are influenced, whether it be by advertising, the media, the government or others with an agenda.

For anyone that studies International Relations or enjoys History, this book sheds light on information that is not taught in ordinary classes or textbooks. It is formatted like an encyclopedia, so it is easy to quickly reference the desired historical event. It's impossible to fully detail the past 500+ years, but this book hits almost all of the major events.

After reading Nicholas John Cull's "Selling War" (1996), I was happy to see that he had authored a subsequent book. I commend his efforts and those of his colleagues to produce an encyclopedia on propaganda and mass persuasion. As a former lecturer in European Modern History, I liked the introduction by David Welch, Director of the Centre for the Study of Propaganda at the University of Kent until he failed to question the U.S. government's conspiracy theory in which they alleged that 19 Arabs carried out the twin towers attack on September 11, 2001. Much to the dismay of the 9/11 truth movement, Welch failed to consider the likelihood of another "Reichstag fire". David Ray Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor" (2004), available at Amazon, addresses the many holes in the government's conspiracy theory, suggesting a faction within the U.S. government itself orchestrated the attacks and blamed it on Arabs.

After identifying a real phenomenon--the fakery of "information" by government, the authors' attempts to catalog government propaganda are irritating in their omissions. For example, there are entries for "Propaganda, Defintions of" (p322) and "Psychological Warfare" (p323). But there is no entry for 'information warfare' or even 'Hollywood' - propagandists who played a major role in Cull's book "Selling War". Further omissions are noted within the definitions where there are entries. For example, under Cull's entry "Iran", he tells us "...in 1953 the United States, which had now succeeded Britain as the dominant foreign power in the country, stepped in, with the CIA backing a coup to restore the shah to power" (p185). All true, but he neglects to tell us that Ayatollah Khomeini had been stashed in France by CIA as a backup man in the event that the shah could not maintain his grip on Iran. When Khomeini did take over after the shah was ousted by the Iranian people, Cull does not tell us that his takeover was orchestrated by Khomeini's U.S. bosses. Khomeini's Islamic rhetoric duped many, but tens of thousands of Iranians were not duped and had to flee. Cull does not tell us that Khomeini's "Great Satan" speeches directed against the U.S. were little more than PSYOPS upon the Iranian people to camouflage the fact that U.S. AWACs helped Iranian F-4 fighters against Iraqi MIGs from 1980-88, surveillance sites on the Soviet/Iran border were still being maintained, and oil flowed to Europe and Japan. In short, if one was to plug their ears and trust their eyes, little changed in Iran from shah to Khomeini where Western interests were concerned. Cull's entry for "Terrorism, War on (2001-)" is a disappointing rehash of government propaganda. Nowhere does Cull tells us that a faction within the U.S. government pulled the twin towers and Building 7, which housed the CIA's New York Section office, after flying commercial airliners into them. Readers are not told that Marvin Bush was in charge of security at the Twin Towers, or that the power went off for one hour on 9/10, which was ample time to plant the explosive devices that took down the towers. Stanley Hilton, a former aide to Repubican Senator Bob Dole, collected affadavits from witnesses who heard the bombs go off, then claimed someone broke into his office and stole them. The government blew up the Twin Towers and blamed it on Arabs and Afghans, but Cull pretends that governments do not do such things.

Much of Cull's problem in separating truth from propaganda is that he relies on secondary sources. Doesn't Cull know that CIA publishes thousands of text books and other so-called authoritative books to keep the general public, even the intelligentsia, from knowing what is really going on? Congressman Frank Church uncovered that aspect of CIA's information warfare back in the '70s. Why is Al-Qa'idah known as Al-CIA-dah? Cull has repeated so much propaganda here that his encyclopedia, rather than distinguishing propaganda from fact, is more propaganda. I don't know why he succumbed to this. Perhaps when he was giving lectures to the British military, he was made to sign the Official Secrets Act and he can no longer say what the government did without facing some gaol time. Given my expectations, this book was a disappointment.