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Science of Coercion

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Highlights

Domination as communication and its partner, consumption as communication, are often presented in academic training seminars and in mass media as acceptable, inevitable, or even as “human nature.” — location: 97 ^ref-14377

Since World War II, the U.S. government’s national security campaigns have usually overlapped with the commercial ambitions of major advertisers and media companies, and with the aspirations of an enterprising stratum of university administrators — location: 229 ^ref-4364

Put most simply, they saw mass communication as an instrument for persuading or dominating targeted groups. They understood “communication” as little more than a form of transmission into which virtually any type of message could be plugged (once one had mastered the appropriate techniques) to achieve ideological, political, or military goals. — location: 272 ^ref-52410

At heart modern psychological warfare has been a tool for managing empire, not for settling conflicts in any fundamental sense. — location: 318 ^ref-37699

modern psychological warfare and propaganda have only rarely offered “alternatives” to violence over the medium-to-long term. Instead, they have been an integral part of a strategy and culture whose premise is the rule of the strong at the expense of the weak, where coercion and manipulation pose as “communication” and close off opportunities for other, more genuine, forms of understanding. — location: 321 ^ref-21960

The problem with psychological warfare is not so much the content of individual messages: It is instead its consistent role as an instrument for maintaining grossly abusive social structures, notably in global North/South relations. — location: 324 ^ref-19935

psychological warfare is the application of mass communication to modern social conflict: it focuses on the combined use of violence and more conventional forms of communication to achieve politicomilitary goals. — location: 384 ^ref-25669

subversion; sabotage; special operations; guerrilla warfare; espionage; political, cultural, economic, and racial pressures are all effective weapons. They are effective because they produce dissension, distrust, fear and hopelessness in the minds of the enemy, not because they originate in the psyche of propaganda or psychological warfare agencies. — location: 396 ^ref-3591