Customer Reviews

Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech, and Opinion Control Since 9/11

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"Information War" by Nancy Snow is a brilliant and biting critique of the Bush administration's use of propaganda to promote its war on terror. Throughout, Dr. Snow's subject matter expertise fuses perfectly with her sense of moral clarity to produce a work that is remarkably informative, incisive and persuasive.

Dr. Snow has worked in academia for over ten years. She is an in-demand lecturer and commentator and has written other books and numerous papers. Importantly, Dr. Snow has served in the USIA, a propaganda agency within the U.S. government, providing the author with inside knowledge about how the U.S. propaganda machine works. Through her education and life experiences, Dr. Snow appears to be on her way to becoming a noteworthy and influential critic who, in my view, might be compared with the likes of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

The foreward is by star investigative journalist Greg Palast, who explains that propaganda is necessary to achieve thought control in a democratic society. Mr. Palast states that today's crop of U.S. spin masters are most interested in projecting American military and commercial power in pursuit of corporate objectives. Mr. Palast writes that the image of "armed and dangerous refugees from corporate boards" who have gained control of America presents a frightening picture to everyone concerned about the consequences of unrestrained and corrupt power.

Dr. Snow beings by arguing that the increasing concentration of media ownership stifles dissent and allows the powerful to define the public interest. The author documents the close ties between intelligence agencies and the media to show how the Pentagon increasingly defines what gets reported. Combined with a compliant media that is more interested in generating advertising revenues than meaningful debate, the declining state of critical journalism as described by the author is not surprising.

Dr. Snow compares propagandists past and present to show how discourse can often be manipulated in the pusuit of specific objectives. For example, Dr. Snow shows how George Creel's campaign to convince the public to enter World War I bears similarities to Charlotte Beer's Madison Avenue-style "branding" campaign of America during the Afghanistan War. The author says that the goal in both cases was to "convince the American people...that this war was a fight over ideas and values more than a fight over land, people and resources." Ultimately, Dr. Snow explains that Ms. Beer's efforts were ineffective because the rhetoric of her ill-conceived advertising campaign clashed badly with the reality of America's role as a "violent international aggressor."

One of my favorite sections was Dr. Snow's delicious skewering of William Bennett, one of the most pompous of all propagandists. The author deftly uses Mr. Bennett's own work against him, arguing that the suffocating intolerance displayed in his book "Why We Fight" clearly illustrates why dissent is critical to maintaining a free and open society.

A few courageous citizens who have spoken truth to power are profiled in the book. These include publisher Janis Besler Heaphy, who was shouted down at a college graduation ceremony for advocating sustained public vigilance of government action; Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who cast the lone vote against Bush's manifesto to wage an open-ended war against terrorism; and author Howard Zinn, whose work for peace has inspired many. Through these and other examples, Dr. Snow highlights the critical role that individuals can play to protect our collective rights.

On the other hand, Dr. Snow believes that the Bush administration's unilateralism and use of preemption will not lead to a better world. Dr. Snow argues that the so-called "Arab Street" (another pejorative and propagandistic term) is angry with the U.S. because of very specific policies and not because of our core values, as is often alleged. However, defining the conflict in simplistic terms enhances the effectiveness of the propaganda and marginalizes anti-war critics. In fact, Dr. Snow reminds us that many of the words spoken by prominent figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., who sometimes railed against U.S. imperialism and war, have long ago been forgotten in corporate news archives.

Instead of being passive recipients, Dr. Snow encourages her readers to actively seek alternative media and to critique and respond to biased news reporting. She recommends that we work to change our government's policies and spend more time listening to others in order to achieve harmony with the world. I found Dr. Snow's common-sense and humane suggestions to be a welcome antidote to the angry and propaganda-soaked material that is usually found on mainstream media.

I strongly encourage everyone to read this inspirational, informative and empowering book.

"Information War" illuminates the Bush administration's control of information in the post-9/11 era. Though it has been over three years since that event, the propaganda machine is still in full swing. Snow highlights the attack on people's intelligence via scare tactics, the vilification of anyone who disagrees with Bush policies, and the unqualified folks put in charge of selling America and its policies to the world.

There is also a history of propaganda to show how a pacifist United States was drummed into a warmongering and blood-thirsty country during World War I. In other words, what Bush and his cronies do isn't new, it's part of a grand American tradition. Empires need propaganda to keep free thought at bay. Just look at Nazi Germany. Snow does.

The comparison is frightening. So, what do we do when the ad manager for Uncle Ben's rice tries to sell America to Arab countries? And what do we do when even the mainstream media is pressured to censor itself? We cannot trust the mainstream anymore (if we ever could), especially when it is so conservatively skewed. Nancy Snow provides the clarion call for all with a mind to speak up.

At this time, perhaps more than ever since this is a nuclear age, it is important to have research out there that tells it like it is about the policies of this country. Information control is not a good thing, especially for the so-called leader of the free world. The truth must be hard to take, but considering the non-stop lies of the Bush administration, Snow knows it will be difficult to understand. Give "Information War" a spin with an open mind, and find yourself edified.

Then take some action.

I recommend the book to everyone who in any way wants to understand the times we are living it. "Information War" gives a great insight into the ways information is dealt today. If there is one thing missing in today's culture it is the ability to see through the quantity of media and information. And this book really cuts through the jungle. In the end it even offers an alternative. Very empowering, well written and full of dry humor in the observations about media and politics in the 21st century USA.

Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech, And Opinion Control Since 9-11 is a candid and disturbing look at how government and media have used spin control and propaganda to shape popular opinion and guide the nation toward a specific political agenda regardless of dissent since the September 11th attacks. Identifying common propaganda techniques such as card-stacking (selectively quoting facts in order to build a case against an opponent that ignores the whole truth of situations the facts refer to), labelling, bandwagon appeal (building support for an idea by perpetuating the sentiment that "everybody" is in favor of it) and much more, it goes on to spot these techniques used in recent quotes from individuals and spokespeople in the turbulent and often militaristic speeches since the attacks. A caustic, keen-eyed, and highly recommended "must-read" for anyone seeking to understand what is really going on underneath recent American rhetoric.

...with this timely and useful tome. Though small in size, it's Brobdingnagian in its depth. Professor Snow provides an excellent overview of today's proaganda and how it works. The writing is clear and accessible without being either 'dumbed down' or scholastic to the point of being windy. We're getting drowned daily in information; sorting through it all to get what we need to make informed decisions is not getting easier. Information War is a great asset to solving this.
John Ford, Public Affairs Producer/Host, KAOS-fm, Olympia WA

To review the content of this book is to wade into a muddy ideological pond as is obvious by the previous reviews. My addition to this critique is limited to the observation that the writing and editing of the material is almost intolerably sub-par. I appreciate that Nancy Snow has attempted to present her/this position at all, but I have been left wishing that she had been more meticulous and had applied greater rigor in the writing and certainly in the editing of the material for print. It has an amateurish/undergraduate quality to it, as though it were written through without a backward glance, and with full license. Syntactical errors, typos, redundancies, and colloquialisms lace the material and make it difficult to tolerate. On the other hand, the author may have had in mind an appeal to a contemporary undergraduate audience for whom this style of writing is a perfect fit. Having made these remarks, it remains only to say that the book is worth reading if only for being one of the few that both dares and manages to cut through American cultural sludge to reveal glimpses of truth.

A VERY short, extremely partisan and ultimately focusless collection of essays by a veteran of the United States Information Agency, the propaganda arm of the government during the Cold War. The USIA is now defunct, subsumed into other departments during the federal restructuring that saw the birth of the Dept. of Homeland Security. Snow is strongest when she is explaining the role and history of propaganda in international affairs. There is also a moving portrait of Rep. Barbara Lee, the sole Representative to try to hold onto Congressional control of War Powers after the Sept. 11 attacks. Congressional War Powers have been a joke since before I was born, but it's nice to see one person stand up for them. There are many other issues addressed here, but it's like a bag of potato chips; three days later, you don't remember them.

What a piece of work Ms. Snow is. On one one hand, she trumpets Freedom of the Press as part of her "favorite psalm (page 12)," and on the other harkens the deregulation of the media that took place in 2003 (page 15) as some sort of plot to institute mind control. Does it take a mere three pages for liberal doublethink to occur? For Ms. Snow, apparently it does.

Snow attempts to wax eloquently about a post-911 antiwar speech given by Howard Zinn (whom she calls a "rock star" and whom I call "a Marxist who never met a communist dictatorship he didn't like") and then goes on with some drivel about "street-taking protests." All this before she even begins to address propaganda, which is the stated purpose of the book.

As far as I can tell (what with Snow's muddled thinking and admiration for French marxists) China, the former USSR and the United States were all big propaganda blocs prior to our victory over Communism. Now that the USSR is gone (and I'm sure leftists like Snow are still mourning the fall of the Wall) the U.S. and China are the only propagandists on the bloc... and she's not sure about China. Apparently because the mass media actually on occasion repeats the President's statements in a non-critical way and fails to be hypercritical at every turn (which I would argue is no longer the case at the moment) then it must be considered to be the same as a state-run media. the fact that the media is not daily screaming at the top of its lungs that we are involved in an unjust war and we should pull out now, today even, bothers Snow quite a bit. She wants the media to put out HER brand of propaganda!

Disagreeing with the Left, by the way, is interfering with the free speech rights. I get that all the time. Dissent is only good when leftists are the dissenters. She particularly took to task the freedom to call someone a "traitor" who is, in fact, working against the interests on the United States of America.

Aside from this rather poor reasoning Snow's twist on the nature of the 911 attackers is rather sickening, as is any attempted justification of those infamous mass murderers. I no more care about their warped view of the world than I do Mengele's, Himmler's, Stalin's or Idi Amin's.

If you want to see how convoluted post-Cold War and post-911 marxist thinking can be, then knock yourself out. Buy this book.

Ms Snow quotes J Goebbels to the effect that the intellectual content of propaganda need not be high, then continues to demonstrate the same concerning books about propaganda. Her opus
is a sketchy collection of ultra-left agitprop, and is published by the same people who bring us N. Chomsky and Angela Davis. I give
two stars since the book has merit as an object for study. The
editing of the book is amateurish, with misspellings, mispunctuations and contains the very odd word "lookyloo".