Have Someone Else Say It

[Born Free]

By John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, AlterNet. Posted August 28, 2004.

Bush & Co. used the old "third party technique" with their Swift Boat attacks on Kerry. The technique is simple: "Put your message in someone else's mouth that the public will listen to."

One of the differences between liberals and conservatives in the United States is that liberals tend to see politics as a debate over issues and policies, whereas conservatives view politics as "the continuation of war by other means." The recent attacks on John Kerry by the GOP-front "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is a fine example of this philosophy in action.

There is an old saying that "all's fair in love and war," and this is certainly true of the communications strategies employed by propagandists engaged in war, whether it be actual battlefield combat or political warfare. Consider, for example, the leaflets that airplanes drop on enemy soldiers, telling them that they are fighting in a lost cause and will die unless they surrender. Maybe this is true, maybe not. From the point of the propagandist, the question of whether it is true doesn't really matter. The point is simply to influence the behavior of the enemy soldiers who read the leaflets.


more:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19695/