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Old Susannah #72 – Propaganda Special

Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, Environment, Satire and Humour No Responses »

Mar 302012

Midway between that referendum and the forthcoming council elections, Old Susannah takes a look at the nature, effect and effectiveness of propaganda. By Suzanne Kelly.

Tally Ho! The weather in Aberdeen has been glorious; half of the town seems to have been at the beach or Torrymelinos this past Sunday; even the dolphins showed up to add to a beautiful spring day. I just finished reading Adam Ardrey’s book ‘Finding Merlin’, which I review elsewhere in Aberdeen Voice.

Ardrey makes some interesting observations in this book. Between this and a thread on Facebook where a city employee set out to defend the City’s publication ‘Our Green Times’ which uses (whether deliberately or not) several propaganda techniques, Old Susannah has been thinking about ways in which people are being manipulated by those in power.

Ardrey’s book and other works show that what little we think we know today about Merlin and Arthur had been deliberately garbled by the propaganda arm of the young Christian church. There was a huge power struggle between the existing druidic tradition (where education was prized, men and women were largely equal) and the new Christian movement.

The church needed to seize power and to instil fear and respect in the populace in order to survive and become supreme. The old ways favoured a system of meritocracy for choosing kings; the church used politics and propaganda, and chose to favour hereditary government. The church could not allow any alternative religion or opposition of any kind to exist.

So the druid Merlin was referred to as a madman and a conjurer in Christian-controlled texts of the times, and non-Christians were lumped into one group called ‘pagans’ and ‘heathens’.

The Christian church’s use of propaganda was skilful, and it pretty much ensured druidic tradition was purged from the records. Only in coded form or in ridicule would the church allow its opponents to be referred to at all. The new religion’s propaganda was sometimes brutal, sometimes subtle – but in the end it won.

Thank goodness today people come to positions of power and influence because of their abilities and not because of money and connections. Take Donald Trump for instance (please – just take him), or some of our amazingly-gifted local politicians and ACSEF members.

They don’t rely on connections, money or propaganda; we love them for everything they’ve done to us – sorry, ‘for us’. We can rely on our governments to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Sure we can.

Just look at the fantastic Phase 2 consultation for the tree planting.

No one objected to the scheme! Result! Of course no one knew at the time there would be a deer cull and most of the trees (89,000 plus) would be plunked on Tullos Hill (as the info had been deliberately withheld), but there you go. And surely no one in power would use ridicule to discredit or suppress vocal opponents?

we are constantly being bombarded with subtle propaganda tactics, which can be quite effective

It’s not as if the work of weapons expert Hans Blix was in any way devalued when he said that Iraq did not have secret stashes of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (this expression, ‘WMD; is itself an example of creating a propaganda phrase which caught on).

Dr. Kelly (RIP), the government advisor, was labelled a ‘Walter Mitty type’ by government mandarins for his courageous stand against the propaganda that led to the Iraq Invasion. Dr Kelly paid for his principles with his life. In fact the whole case for this bloody war was based on a dossier that was ‘sexed up’ – i.e. blatantly amended and turned into propaganda. This was done by the top propagandists of our times: Blair and Campbell.

But we are constantly being bombarded with subtle propaganda tactics, which can be quite effective. Believe it or not, this even happens here in Aberdeen! Perhaps our kindly, benevolent government just wants to help us by digesting facts for us, skipping the ones that might upset us, and painting a rosy picture for us to swallow without question. Quite nice of them, really.

One person, however, wants to analyse the secrets of the propagandist and ruin the party.
See: http://history.howstuffworks.com/historians/propaganda1.htm

Time (finally) to get on with some propaganda-based definitions…

Fear: (noun) state of alarm or terror. In propaganda terms, ‘fear’ is deliberately employed to influence people’s thoughts and actions.

Surely no one would ever employ fear as a propaganda weapon against the good people of Aberdeen? Well, there was the little matter of fear-based propaganda over the gardens: build them or no companies will come to Aberdeen to set up shop was the message that pretty A3 colour flyer and the BIG partnership put about.

Of course BiG is really, really subtle when it comes to propaganda, as we’ve seen recently. While you got this message in a Technicolor brochure, your employer may well have been writing to you to say you should vote for the web. The combined message was: ‘Worried about money? Then you better support the web and we’ll all be rich and have jobs.’

Fear was used on us – and it was used by the secretive group Vote for the City Gardens Project which was accountable to no one – but which certainly put out a nice quantity of propaganda. Old Susannah has copies of the lovely A3 colour leaflet, and is considering whether to frame them or recycle as a cat tray liner. I’ll get back to you on my decision.

Here’s a decision which I have made.

According to my sources, some of those who participated in and/or financed and/or were connected to the secretive ‘Vote for the City Gardens Project’ included:

Stewart Milne (no introduction needed)
Mary Martin (of the Douglas Hotel)
Sandy Clark
Mike Wilson
Colin Manson
Tommy Dreelan

I am sure these modest heroes who helped voters choose sides won’t mind my mentioning them now. However, if any of those named above writes to deny any involvement with VFTCGP, then I will be more than happy to remove their name from my list and issue an apology. If any other VFTCGP supporters or financers who wish to step up to receive the grateful public’s thanks, then please do get in touch. But on with our definitions.

Stop Government Propaganda Now: (noun) American legislation supported by GW Bush (really) which sought to make it a criminal offense for government to influence media to push particular stories, skew the truth, or to hide information.

Has anything like that happened in Aberdeen? Would the local media allow itself to be used? Would local media favour its higher-spending advertisers? Hmmm.

But the city government has its own periodicals including ‘Our Green Times’. The supporter of this periodical who was flying its flag on Facebook quite rightly pointed out that the thing costs time and money to create (taxpayer money mind).

Old Susannah was in an interesting Facebook thread with a city employee who is involved in the publication of Aberdeen City’s PR ‘newspaper’, ‘Our Green Times. Consciously or not, the person who made these posts used several more types of tools straight out of the ‘Propaganda For Dummies’ handbook. The first was:

Name-calling: (noun) Propaganda tool which seeks to both deflect attention away from any actual issues, and create a negative stereotype to brand groups of people with. Name-calling can become widely used (the word ‘CHAV’ being a good example), or it can be something subtle.

The Facebook defender of Aberdeen City’s publication, ‘Our Green Times’ somehow came up with a category of people he called ‘campaigners’, and the implication was made that campaigners were failing to see all the good things going on in the city, and focused on the negative.

Gee. ‘Campaigners’ – the word evokes right-on, aggressive militants with placards, if not extremists. Yet when it comes to issues such as Union Terrace Gardens, the Tullos Hill situation, and the swingeing budget cuts, there is no wider cross-section of ‘campaigners’ to be found. I call them ‘people’ myself. But he’s tried to establish that there is a negative group of people, and they are to be lumped together and called ‘campaigners’ for criticising the city.

Card-stacking: (noun)to present only information which makes a positive public impression – and in so doing gives the impression – whether deliberate or otherwise – that there are no negative issues.

This is in many ways the most serious form of propaganda weapon. In the words of the author of the article published in ‘how stuff works’ in the above link:-

“… the bad stuff is left out entirely. …. this type of propaganda technique presents a lopsided and unrealistic viewpoint that is dangerously deceptive.”

Sorry, but the above description fits exactly with what ‘Our Green Times’ does. In its pages there are no deer culls, no high pollution figures for Wellington Road, and no urban sprawl issues.

By now the Facebook discussion thread was growing by leaps and bounds. Another poster asked our man from ‘Our Green Times’ about several environmental issues. The reply that came back? ‘FFS’. (Old Susannah is told this is a rather rude expression, but I certainly have no idea what it means and no intention of defining it).

Yet another poster showed up to defend ‘Our Green Times;’ she ridiculed the guy who’d asked the questions.

Ridicule: (noun) to belittle by poking fun at something or someone; in propaganda terms, this is an old standby favourite. If you can get your opponent laughed at, then you are on your way.

Old Susannah will put her hand up: I have actually believed one or two people in power in our fair city deserving of a bit of ridicule; some readers may have seen small traces of this in previous columns. Historically, the English literally belittled Napoleon – he was jokingly called a small man. Truth was, he was taller than Nelson.

Old Susannah could go on about other propaganda tools such as ‘transfer’ and ‘Greenwash’ (to pretend to be greener than you are to win acceptance ), but you get the idea.

We were blitzed with propaganda over the City Garden Project, and in the run up to the May elections, we will be bombarded with yet more. I’d just like to suggest strongly to everyone to take on board that these techniques exist, and to be alert for when they are used on you.

By all means apply the same criteria to everything you read in The Aberdeen Voice too.

The Voice will take articles and writing from anyone on any subject, so long as it meets legal requirements for publication. The Voice has no agenda of its own; it has printed items on both sides of issues such as the Menie Golf Course and the AWPR. It has no advertisers to keep happy, only readers to hopefully inform, entertain, and amuse.

An Interview With Maggie Craig – Part 2

Articles, Community, Creative Writing, History, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Jan 192012

We continue our serialisation of David Innes’ interview with author Maggie Craig. Her two books on the Jacobite Rebellion, the evocatively-titled ‘Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ‘45’, and ‘Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the ‘45’ are critically-lauded. She explains why she looks at that fractious period of our heritage from a different angle to that usually taken by historians.

You’ve written two books on the Jacobites – where did that inspiration come from?

That came from a novel called The Flight of the Heron by DK Broster which an uncle gave to me. I loved it, and it’s my Fahrenheit 451 book, the one I’d save from the flames.

But like an awful lot of Scots, what I knew about the Jacobites is from that novel, a high romance about friendship and so on.

And although the folk songs are great, they sometimes get things a bit mixed up. Then, when it was the 250th anniversary of Culloden in 1995, I’d started to write a novel set in that period and I needed a baddie, so I went looking for a Campbell. I found a Macdonald saying, “We’ll surrender, but only to a Campbell”.

That was a light bulb moment when you think, “History’s not as simple as you’re taught it is”. Why were they prepared to surrender to a Campbell? They must have respected that guy or thought that he’d give them a better deal, so I started researching it and I got interested in the women because, well, Flora bloody Macdonald is all you’re presented with. I didn’t try to debunk her but she’s such an unacceptable kind of female, standing there while the Prince kisses her hand and I think, “Nah, there must have been women doing different things from that” so I went looking for the women first of all.

They’re attached to their men, of course, so you get a lot of stories about the men too, including the Jacobites of Aberdeenshire and Banffshire. There was a huge amount of Jacobite support in this area. They called them the Lowland regiments, but there were a lot of Episcopalians in Aberdeenshire who would tend to fight for the Jacobites because they were persecuted for supporting the Stuart cause. They couldn’t meet for a proper service, only in twos or threes.

There was a lot going on around Banff and Duff House. The Duffs, of course, were on whichever side was winning as they’ve tended to be. You can’t blame those who hedged their bets. If you had a farm or an estate and you had tenants, and there would have been people who cared about their tenants, you had to be cagey because you didn’t know which way it was going to go – and the consequences of failure were horrendous.

About eighty people were hanged. A lot of Aberdeenshire was laid waste. I’ve quoted that, “the people of Strathbogie were back in their fields but they’re as inclined to rebellion as ever”. I thought “Wow”. You don’t get that impression nowadays, where people keep their heads down and don’t say much about getting involved in politics.

Although when I went to speak to kids in Ellon about ‘When The Clyde Ran Red’, I said, “It’s harder to be a radical on a farm, isn’t it?”. When you’re working for a farmer and you don’t have your comrades about you then it’s harder to stand up and say, “I don’t think this is right”.

I think there’s a kind of hidden history of Aberdeenshire. The anniversary of the Battle of Harlaw was a huge missed opportunity to help tell it.

So you feel that Jacobitism and the Rebellion needs to be re-evaluated as a radical movement.

It’s said that history is written by the winners, but to a large extent that history has been written by the losers and the greatest losers, you could say, have been the West Highlands. That’s fair enough – the devastation, the burnings, the rapes, the murders, shooting the boys and shooting the old men and all that stuff, but I think that has skewed our vision of it. It’s dangerous, because you always see it through your own perspective.

I’m a Scottish nationalist (with a small n) and having read a lot about the Rebellion, I think a huge amount of it was about wanting to reverse the Act of Union. There was no democracy in those days and the only focus for discontent was Charlie, so he funnelled in a lot of different people.

There was a lot of criticism of him because he could be very high-handed, but he was the only way they were going to get regime change, so my take on it is that it was a kind of Rainbow Coalition. It brought in a lot of people and it was kind of before its time. We’ve got the Enlightenment in Glasgow and Edinburgh and probably Aberdeen – I don’t know and it’s something people need to research – but this was still pre-Industrial Revolution where the weavers and the like became radicalised. I think if it had happened fifty years later, things could have turned out differently.

When you read about the eighteenth century, you always hear about the power of the mob which would gather together in whatever town. I think that’s radicalism, but they’re always presented as a bunch of drunken yobs. If you look at the 1730s Porteous Riot about the Malt Tax, people are asking, “Why is London taxing us and why are they taxing us so severely?” After the ’45 they didn’t try any of the leaders in Scotland because they didn’t think a Scottish jury would convict. I think because the whole North British project took off after that.

people say that it’s sentimentality. It’s not. It’s love. It’s death and feeling.

There couldn’t be a rocking of the boat in North Britain and some Scots became very successful. I see someone like Andrew Marr as being very like an eighteenth century Scot – he’s gone to London and sort of sold out, hasn’t he? I like his programmes, but he’s sold out his Scottishness.

We can get caught both ways. If you say that the Scots have always had a great sense of justice you’re told that you’re just being sentimental, or that you’re looking at the world through rose-coloured spectacles, but then there’s the ‘Jock Tamson’s bairns’ thing which does unite us. I think there’s almost a natural democracy, a collective “That’s no fair, you’ve got to do something about it” attitude that unites us, and it’s not a bad battle cry!

My daughter and I came back from Switzerland via Paris a couple of weeks ago and there were eight London lawyers, all about 40, on the Eurostar. Now there’s nothing wrong with having a wee refreshment but they got more and more offensive about the working classes who “couldn’t get up off their arses and do anything” and they said, “Let’s get some fizz” and bought three bottles of champagne and they got worse and worse. Of course the rest of us just sat and did nothing, but they were such a stereotype of that ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude. One said, “Why should we care about healthcare for poor people?”

We Scots can be our own worst enemies, though. We’ve got someone like Robert Burns, who’s world class and who unites the North East and Ayrshire, but people say that it’s sentimentality. It’s not. It’s love. It’s death and feeling.

A local Rotary Club thought it was being radical when I was the first woman to propose the Immortal Memory at their Burns Supper. I said that Burns slept around and that if I’d been married to him I’d have slapped him into the middle of next week. Even saying that raised a few eyebrows. I wasn’t saying anything that isn’t known and I still admire him for his humanity. We need to reclaim him for the radical he was.

I looked briefly at Thomas Muir of Huntershill, a radical. We don’t look back to the friends of the people. In the 1790s these men and girls were totally admirable and put their lives on the line to say that workers ought to have rights. There’s so much of our history that we aren’t taught.

I was delighted to see that Red Clydeside is now in the Higher curriculum but in history classes the ’45 is viewed as a crowd of misguided romantic people. That’s a very narrow point of view and it’s time we opened it up. Sometimes the way they treat Red Clydeside is as dry as dust. The history’s got to be about the people and those people were fallible, they made mistakes – and sometimes you point out that someone regarded as a hero was rotten to his wife.

That’s where we leave this part of the interview, but of course this led to discussion of the current political situation, which we’ll carry in the next issue.

Those of you who want to meet Maggie and hear a bit more about her influences have the opportunity on Saturday 21 January when she and fellow writer Kenneth Steven will be at The Central Library, Aberdeen at 11.00 to talk about their love of books.

Westburn Tennis Roundup – 06.01.12

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Information, News, Sport No Responses »

Jan 062012

With thanks to Dave Macdermid.

Milly Wood, the grand-daughter of top world veteran player Jimmy, is the new Stewart Milne Group Indoor Championships Girls 12 & Under Singles Champion. The Braid youngster, whose father is former North County player Jimmy jnr, came through two tough sets in the final at Westburn Tennis Centre to get the better of Daphne Pratt (The Parklangley Club): the score 7-5, 7-5.

The 16 & Under title was won by Stirling’s Hannah Worsley, who proved too strong for Rubislaw’s Fiona Hamilton: winning 6-1, 6-1.

There were no surprises in the boys events with Russell Graham (Kinnoull), Scott Macaulay (Newlands) and Cameron Bowie (Barnton Park) all living up to their top billing in the 18, 16 and 12 & Under competitions respectively.

The senior events will take place this weekend at Westburn Tennis Centre.

Results:

BOYS SINGLES – 18 & Under Semi Finals – R. Graham (Kinnoull) bt N. Orismaa (DL West End Glasgow) 5-7, 6-1, (10-8); R. Martin (Inverness) w.o. M. Williamson (Dollar) scr.

Final – Graham bt Martin 6-2, 6-1.

16 & Under Final – S. Macaulay (Newlands) bt C. Macgeoch (Gosling) 7-6 (3), 6-0.

12 & Under Final – C. Bowie (Barnton Park) bt A. Hepburn (Nairn) 6-3, 6-3.

GIRLS SINGLES 16 & Under Semi Finals – H. Worsley (Stirling) bt J. Curran (Aboyne) 6-1, 6-3; F. Hamilton (Rubislaw) bt F. Fleming (Rubislaw) 6-0, 6-0.

Final – Worsley bt Hamilton 6-1, 6-1.

12 & Under Semi Finals – D. Pratt (The Parklangley Club) bt J. Campbell (Nairn) 6-0, 6-1; M. Wood (Braid) bt A. Burns (Stonehaven) 6-2, 6-3.

Final – Wood bt Pratt 7-5, 7-5.