IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANS

Having reviewed the technical means of Soviet propaganda we shall deal in this section with the strings it pulls to attract feelings, and in the following section, with the fallacies to which it resorts to delude minds.

SHAMELESS DEMAGOGY

The simplest and unfortunately most effective means used by Soviet propaganda is simply vulgar demagogy, but enlarged to a scale hitherto considered impossible. Thus, it was never believed possible to kindle contradictory discontents simultaneously. Yet that is what the Kremlin does every day: setting town against country because bread is too dear, country against town because grain is too cheap, tradesman against official in the name of initiative, official against tradesman in the name of planning, European against American in the name of culture, American against European in the name of peace; stirring up the prejudices most contrary to the internationalist and antisocial doctrines it professes, such as chauvinism, when it is a question of arousing Franco-German enmity, and anti-Semitism, if Israel happens to stand in the way of Soviet imperialism; and even enrolling the ages and dialectic in the service of its impostures by wrapping them up into the "historical process." Communist demagogy is the first to have dared assume the dimensions and the blazon of history.

NO LIMIT TO FALSEHOOD AND DUPLICITY

That Bolshevism has attained to absolute falsehood is apparent from its basic position, for it promises total liberation and organizes total enslavement. The following is a very incomplete list of examples of its methods, whose equivalent in imposture content is not to be found in any other movement in history:

Calling the troops who bring the cruelest subjection to the country they conquer "armies of liberation."

Offering their services as partners to "defend freedom" and preparing tyranny. Inciting workers to demand trade union rights and ruthlessly taking them away as soon as power is won.

Labeling the tendency to equalize income "bourgeois" in Communist countries and "communist" in bourgeois countries.

Forcing innocent people to "confess" they are criminals and worship their executioners.

Calling compulsory voting for single candidates an "election" and sessions of unanimous endorsement "debates."

Condemning West German rearmament after having overarmed East Germany,

etc.

Not much thought has been given in the West to the fact that for the first time in history a political system has actually been built on a hundred percent lies, with the further characteristic that lying is practiced ostentatiously. The strong point of this excess is that it saturates and wearies mistrust. Freemen living in a world where a minimum of good faith is observed (if only because political rivalry prevents one side from carrying falsehood too far since the other can unmask it) simply cannot believe that falsehood can reach this point. Further, it is impossible for feeling not to be polarized in favor of communism, if it always appears disguised in winning words. Don't

democrats always discuss the Soviet regime in terms of "communism," as if it followed the generous doctrines formulated a hundred years ago under that name? Whereas they ought long ago to have adopted the term "fascism" or "absolutism" for it.

THE THIEF CRYING "THIEF”

The old trick of the thief who cries "thief" to divert attention from himself is well known. It is a fundamental stratagem of Soviet propaganda, which does nothing else when, preparing the severest exploitation that ever existed, it arouses Western workers against exploitation. But the chief field for applying this stratagem is supplied by the peoples of Asia and Africa. By urging them to fix their eyes, concentrate their cries, shake their fists at defunct Western colonialism, crypto-Communist propaganda prevents them from seeing, hearing, checking Soviet colonialism on the upsurge.

PLAYING ON INERTIA AND LAZINESS

Communism speculates on the political inertia by which the sympathy once won for it among Western liberals by its early kinship with Socialist movements and their emancipating aims is extended to it. It can be said that communism has made its whole career as an impostor among the left, by leading the left to believe that it is for the workers, for progress, economic rationality, social justice, the independence of peoples; in short, that it stands for the same ideas as the left, when in fact it is digging a grave for the left.

While the U.S.S.R. leads "advanced" thinkers to believe that its economy has no equal in the world, it leads "conservative" thinkers to believe that its diplomacy is the same as everybody else's. In the first case it plays on the inertia that perpetuates credos, in the second on the laziness that favors quietude; and in both it lies. The notion that the U.S.S.R. is a power "like the others" in its international behavior caters to intellectual laziness because it eliminates the necessity of giving special treatment to Soviet ways. And that yields the Kremlin substantial profits, for it induces western leaders to believe that with the Soviets a conference, a treaty, a minister are a conference, a treaty, a minister, when actually the Kremlin dictatorship has turned them respectively into a trap, a rag, a menial.

All the considerations which tend to dissolve the abnormal, sham character of the Soviet world into normal standards of decency contribute greatly to its victory. Let us mention at random a few such considerations which find a wide response in the West:

A Soviet statesman was a comrade in arms; yes, but whereas in the West a statesman is still a man whose personal inclinations and friendships may count, in the U.S.S.R. he is a strict performer of the Politbureau's directives.

The Russian people do not want war (any more than any other people); yes, but while in the West the people have a bearing on politics, in the U.S.S.R. they have nothing to say.

A conference is better than a rebuff; yes, between people who confer to explain themselves or reach an agreement, not with the Soviets, who do so only to bring into play the tricks and duplicity of the

propaganda by which they hope to win the contest without striking a blow.

Everyone has done some wrong; yes, but the wrongs of some are wrongs; those of the Soviets are crimes.

CAPITALIZING ON ITS OWN TURPITUDE

Soviet propaganda resorts to this practice proscribed by the laws of decency, when, for instance, after having compelled democracies to rearm, it capitalizes on the remorse with which rearming fills them.

BLUFFING DEMOCRACIES ON THEIR OWN PRINCIPLES

The Kremlin, now much more colonialist and imperialist than the West, plays on the uneasy conscience that the past faults of the West create in western public opinion:

It plays on the traditional pacifism of this public opinion to make all firmness look like warmongering.

It plays on democracy's tolerance to induce it to tolerate CPs, the personification of intolerance.

It plays on liberal circles' concern for objectivity to incite neutralism on the pretext of striking a balance between America's faults and those of the U.S.S.R., when it is impossible to be neutral between the camp of freedom and the camp of slavery.

It plays on liberals' traditional mistrust of their own state to freeze them into an oppositional temper, which paralyzes any uniting of western forces against Soviet totalitarianism.

In short, one of the keys of Soviet propaganda is burying liberals in their own principles as in a shroud. It is high time for democrats to shake off the spell and reject the speculation made on their purity by the impure.

PLAYING ON FEAR

Many of the successes of Soviet propaganda are due not to conviction but to fear. The Kremlin displays its power to the maximum and even displays more than it actually has. In this way it develops a concession reflex among the masses, and gets a great many prominent persons to go over to its side, in the belief that in case of victory such a power will be ruthless to its opponents, while no risk is run in berating the western camp, considering its tolerance.

PLAYING ON RIVALRIES

Communist propaganda pounces on every bone of contention that divides the free world and embitters conflicts at will. It drums up our national, ideological, economic rivalries. If the free world were not threatened by Communist totalitarianism it would be right to let play these frictions, from which an advanced society can derive ferments of progress in normal times. But indulging in them at the moment when the combined forces of all its members are barely sufficient to meet the bear getting ready to swallow them all, it reveals its decay and brings to mind the spectacle of Byzantium lost in arguments over the Eucharist on the eve of the Turks' entrance within its walls.

PLAYING ON IGNORANCE

In democracies the masses and a large part of the elite are only incidentally concerned with politics, for they have not yet realized that their own philosophy, subordinating government to the consent of the governed, makes their fate depend on politics. The Soviets have realized this. That is the reason why, while they crush freedom of opinion in their own realm, they have overequipped themselves to circumvent it in our countries. They are active in politics every day, every year, and have accumulated, for the use of democratswho are only Sunday politicians-an enormous stockpile of views, counterviews, formulas, fallacies, attitudes, dialectical arguments which are hollow and easily taken to pieces if closely examined, but which impress laymen. Here they enjoy the benefits of a bluff that an unscrupulous specialist can easily put over on well-meaning amateurs. When they impress the good people of the West with all their stock of pedantic systems, we witness a resurrection of Molière's doctor pontificating in Latin in front of a bourgeois. Here there is a gaping hole in the intellectual armour of the free world.

PLAYING ON FRIVOLITY

Mr. Mikoyan in the US ***,

PLAYING ON FORBEARANCE

Mr. Macmillan in the U.S.S.R. * *

V. LOGOMACHIC MEANS

The unpreparedness of democracies in both knowledge of the facts and the art of discussion makes it possible for the Soviets to flood the free world with fallacies painstakingly cooked up, with views apparently plausible but actually playing into the hands of the Soviets.

CHANGING FRAME OF REFERENCE AND LIGHTING

To mislead judgment, Communist propaganda first uses a subtle and effective method which consists in tacitly changing frames of reference and lighting when passing from the Soviet regime to the free world's. The following table summarizes the most current of these modifications of criteria and attitudes, surreptitiously carried out by auxiliaries.

FALLACY NO. 1: WE ARE FACED WITH A CONFLICT BETWEEN "TWO BLOCS" THE U.S.S.R. AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

This propaganda theme satisfies the old liberal vision that international clashes never have anything but a sordid economic basis. The services it renders to the U.S.S.R. are the following:

Establishing equality of guilt between the U.S.S.R. and the United States as countries equally engaged in defending or extending their empire.

Thanks to this false symmetry, hiding unilateral Soviet practices and aims of aggression and hegemony.

Since the question is only one of rivalry between interests, inducing uninvolved countries to believe they can stand aside, therefore remain neutral.

Yet the conflict is neither national nor economic. It does not take place between two empires nor between socialism and capitalism. Whatever opinion one may hold on these two systems, it is clear that the rulers in the Kremlin hate socialism as much as capitalism when appearing in a democratic form. The Kremlin only embodies a combination of political absolutism and economic bureaucratism which makes it possible to exploit and oppress people with unequalled harshness. It has but one ambition, to make its totalitarian state apparatus perdure, and, to serve this ambition, only one means, extending the domination of that apparatus to the whole world. For it cannot bear on its flank the presence of a free society whose way of life dissolves the Soviet armature of lies and fascinates its fettered subjects. It is because the West personifies democracy that the U.S.S.R. wants to crush it.

The conflict is then between freedom and dictatorship, between a humanistic open-society civilization and a despotic closed-tribe system. That is the reason why minds even more than territory are at stake. That is the reason why it concerns every man, at every corner of the earth. If "bloc" is to mean the totality of threatened nations, then the term must be widened to cover the whole of the free world, not