Psychological Warfare - A Brief Perspective
Psychological warfare is a tactic involving the use of propaganda or similar methods to demoralize the enemy in an attempt to ensure victory, possibly without even having to use physical violence. New technologies such as the radio, television, and the internet have helped carve the face of modern psychological warfare, ever creating new ways to reach the opposition. As long as conflicts exist, expect new forms of psychological warfare to be formulated and implemented.
Historical Perspective
1. Biblical Times
Psychological warfare was used in the Old Testament in Judges when Gideon fought the Amalekites.
2. Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great of Macedon swayed the mindsets of the people who were expropriated in his campaigns. To prevent them from revolting, he left some men behind in each city to introduce Greek culture, control it and oppress dissident views as well as interbreed. Most successfully, he influenced loyalist and separatist opinions alike and changed the psyches of the occupied people to conform.
3. The Mongols
Without psychological warfare, the Mongols would never have conquered more territory in the 13th century than anyone else in human history. This was their SOP:
Before attacking a settlement, the Mongol general would demand tribute and submission to the Khan or otherwise threaten to attack. The Mongols would threaten a village with complete destruction should a single arrow be fired. Nations like Kiev and Khwarizm, refused to surrender. In a series of choreographed maneuvers, the cavalry slaughtered the enemy.
As seen in many movies, a few would be spared to take their tales of the encroaching horde to the next villages. This created an aura of insecurity with the resistance, eventually supplanting the will of the villagers ending in victory.
Genghis Khan used fire at night to create an illusion of numbers. He ordered each soldier to light three torches at dusk in order to deceive and intimidate enemy scouts. Tamerlane, built a pyramid of 90,000 human heads before the walls of Delhi, to convince them to surrender.
4. World War II
Most of the events throughout history involving psychological warfare utilized tactics that instilled fear or a sense of awe towards the enemy. In the 20th century, advances in communications technology acted as a catalyst for mass propagandizing.
a) Adolf Hitler was one of the first leaders to relentlessly gain fanatical support through the use of technology. Most intelligently, Hitler used resonating projections of his orations through a microphone to exaggerate his presence to make him seem almost god-like.
This was a form of psychological warfare, because the image that he created for himself greatly influenced and swayed the German people to eventually follow him to what would ultimately become their own destruction. Sir Winston Churchill made similar use of radio for propaganda from the Allied side.
b) The American military in the invasion of Normandy displayed a fusion of psychological warfare with military deception. Before "D-Day," "Operation Quicksilver" created a fictional "First United States Army Group" (FUSAG) commanded by General George S. Patton that supposedly would invade France at the Pas-de-Calais. American troops used false signals, decoy installations, and phony equipment to deceive German observation aircraft and radio intercept operators.
America also used psychological warfare with some success in Japan during the same war. The Lemay bombing leaflets over Japan at the end of WWII was a major move by American forces. These documents, containing propaganda in Japanese, fostered distrust of Japanese leaders and encouraged the surrender of Japanese forces.
c) Radio personalities such as Lord Haw-Haw, Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Seoul City Sue and Hanoi Hannah also used propaganda for their respective causes.
d) The Cold War raised psychological techniques to a high art and merged them with economic warfare, "character assassination," and brainwashing. Techniques used include:
- Broadcasting of white noise to convince eavesdroppers that encryption was in use, and to waste vast sums of time and money trying to decrypt it.
- Recruiting particularly innocent-appearing individuals to be spies or saboteurs so that, when revealed or captured, doubt would be cast on many more individuals.
- Various methods to ensure that any captured agent implicated as many innocent others as possible, for instance, maximizing the number of questionable contacts.
In the 1980s, the Information Age provided the potential to extend psychological warfare throughout all civilian activities. Growing exponentially through the rise of radio, television, and finally manifesting itself on the Internet, the power of those who framed facts about the world steadily grew during the postwar period.
According to Daniel Lerner in Psychological Warfare Against Nazi Germany: The Sykewar Campaign, D-Day to VE-Day, psychological warfare operations can be divided into three categories:
- White [Omissions + Emphasis] - Truthful and not strongly biased, where the source of information is acknowledged.
- Grey [Omissions + Emphasis + Racial/Ethnic/Religious Bias] - Largely truthful, containing no information that can be proven wrong; the source may or may not be hidden.
- Black [Commissions of falsification] - Intended to deceive the enemy.
Propaganda appeals to emotion, not intellect. Propaganda was often used to influence opinions and beliefs on religious issues, particularly during the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches.
Psychological Operations or PSYOP are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motivations, objectives, reasoning and behavior. It entails learning about the enemy - their beliefs, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Once they know these, they will begin the psychological warfare campaign which is a war of the mind!!!
You can read more at THIS LINK. For samples of propaganda leaflets, CLICK HERE.
Some of you may wonder why I read up so much to write on this topic. Well, firstly, I am quite fed up of the current scene and need to activate my brain by reading more. Secondly, I love to give myself little research projects like this to occupy my time :-) in the evening. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed surfing the net for the wealth of information available and believe this information is so vital for us to make sense of the nonsense around us. Do leave a comment about this topic if you wish. I would love to hear your views. Take care and have a blessed evening/day wherever you may be.
Doc Aiyo!, what a pity Malaysia was never around during these historical eras. If not we could have used the BN regime's gangster tactics as an example of a type of psychological war fare. Hehehe...
Cheers and take care.