Group: Gathering & Keeping Together

Conditioning propaganda, in preparation for future action, often stresses rehearsals of responses so people know what to do. Such preparations are most systematic and are easiest to observe in military units, indoctrinated in certain values and trained in certain specific responses. Standing armies, for example, spend most of their time practicing and rehearsing various contingency plans.

In a less formal manner, civilian societies and other groupings get prepared for action by the slogans and clichés commonly used and accepted within the societies. For example, whenever some terrorist group or some small nation attacks American interests abroad, there's apt to be a wide spread spontaneous public response, using a predictable, limited number of clichés relating to retaliation and to dominance: "They can't get away with that. . . ." Many such slogans and clichés are behavior instructions, telling us what to do, how to behave: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

Conditioning propaganda acts as the necessary prelude to any specific response which could be called for later. Whatever the degree of intensity, there has to be a constant and sustained bonding of the group if it is to act effectively when it is necessary. If the group is well-bonded, it can respond to any new threat introduced.

Once a group is bonded, a structure and an organization comes into being and tends to perpetuate itself. People, especially the leaders, have roles to live, and often jobs to protect. Those in the organization now have a vested interest in keeping the group alive, moving, and even growing.

A sense of movement and progress is important to any progressive group: a sense of hope in achieving the goals, overcoming the obstacles, enduring the difficulties, of crossing the river Jordan and getting to the promised land.

When this sense of progress stops, when movement is stalled or bogged down, then the group is in trouble. Sometimes, when a group's goal is achieved, there is an anticlimax and the group falls apart. To prevent such disintegration, groups usually survive by creating new goals. For example, when the March of Dimes organization achieved its goal of victory over polio, the staff and leaders did not disband, but transferred their techniques, experience, and organization to a new cause, birth defects.

Communal groups and utopian societies usually succeed or fail depending on how long they can keep bonded for a specific cause. Typically, during the 1960s the many communes that were formed managed to survive only as long as they were actively progressing with a specific unifying cause (e.g., building a dome, winning an election).

People who donate to a charity or subscribe to a special interest magazine will soon begin receiving letters from other related organizations because mailing lists are rented out and shared, a useful way of bonding a movement, of keeping like-minded people informed of what's going on in other areas closely related to their special interests. Birdwatchers who join the Audubon club, for example, are likely to donate money to help "save the whales" or "save the wetlands" or other conservationist causes. In our enormously large and complicated society, these are good methods for individuals to pick and choose a few areas for their concern.

One way to keep bonded is to keep introducing new threats and new causes.

In politics, for example, both the Left and the Right have a cluster of overlapping causes -- a movement. In such movements, people usually share the same goals or causes, and the same threats or enemies. Once you get on a mailing list of any cause group, the list will be shared (rented) with others in the movement. Soon, you'll get alerts from many groups, warnings of other impending threats. It is to the advantage of any single group, left-wing or right-wing, to keep its members bonded by helping out its allies.

For example, Iran, in 2006 sponsored an Islamic conference denying the reality of the Holocaust. Islamic observers point out that most Muslims have never heard of Hitler's "final solution" -- the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed:

"Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it. "

In March 2005, for example, the Terri Schiavo case (the brain-damaged woman on life-support) saw Republican politicians change their traditional views on states-rights, judicial independence, and "intrusive big government" in order to pay back political debts to their "pro-life" conservative Christian groups which were using this issue to keep their supporters active and bonded for a "cause" -- to save a life! During that same weekend, liberal groups were bonding together in anti-war protest marches marking the 2nd anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Commemorating the 1,500 American dead (and untold thousands of Iraq citizens), they were also "pro-life."

Notice that both sides in these complex ethical and highly emotional issues -- "hot button issues" or "wedge issues" or, as GOP strategist Karl Rove calls them, "anger points"-- are apt to use the same basic strategy and tactics, this same pattern of threat-bonding-cause-response. Effectiveness varies, however. Some would suggest that one side has better organization (electronic mailing lists, etc.), more money, or media access. But, in these two specific cases, the responses sought were different: "stop-the-war" was vague and general; "Save Terri Schiavo" was very limited and specific.

Although Terri Schiavo's husband was vilified, accused of lying, cruelty, and greed, there were also many attacks against the judges, the courts, and the judicial system. Many have commented on the extraordinary politics involving the Congress and the President, but it's reasonable to point out that the Christian conservative movement has bonded its believers in March (complete with a martyr) for the upcoming battles of the judicial nominees, to get the "right kind" of judges for the federal courts and the Supreme Court. For example, Time (April 4, p. 24) reported: "This is not about Terri Schiavo," says George Annas, chairman of the health law department at Boston University School of Public Health. "I think this is about abortion and stem cells. Congress wants to say that we need pro-life judges because the judiciary is out of control and favors death over life."

Some liberals thought that the social conservatives' emphasis on "family values" during the 2004 campaign, exploiting sincere religious beliefs, was a diversionary strategy to gain middle-class voters, funded by corporate interests for their own economic benefit. Other analysts knew that Republican Party strategist Karl Rove -- The Architect had previously organized the right-wing Christian evangelicals, not only as voters, but also as "an army of Christian footsoldiers," as party workers doing door-to-door campaigning to get out the vote. To mobilize this group, "to energize the base," all it took was a series of attacks, using surrogates (e.g. "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth") in order to have "plausible deniability" ("We had nothing to do with it."), demonizing John Kerry, attacking his strongest point, and linking him with "rights" advocates favoring "gay marriage," an "anger point" for the evangelicals who saw themselves as"defending marriage."

Thus, after the election, the religious right wing was furious at being "betrayed" by the president and others, who they felt that "they had elected" in November. During early 2005, the Bush administration had not given attention to their conservative social issues, instead concentrated efforts on corporate conservative economic issues, such as opening the Alaska Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, tightening bankruptcy laws, "tort reform" limiting corporate liability, and trying to privatize Social Security

Ronald Brownstein's analysis reported that the anger stirred up will escalate the conflict: "The Schiavo case 'will animate and bring more emotion into the view held by many conservatives already that the courts are rewriting the Constitution to suit their own value system,' said Gary Bauer, a social conservative activist. 'The case provided an additional spur, if they needed any, to move ahead' with prohibiting filibusters for judicial nominees."

Three weeks later, the controversy flared up again when conservative evangelicals sponsored "Justice Sunday" (April 24, 2005), a bonding rally to denounce those who opposed Bush's court nominations as being against "people of faith." (See: PBS Summary) This blunt attack caused such an outroar (even in the Texas Baptist Standard newspaper editorial) that both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and President Bush distanced themselves from it.

But, even before Schiavo died, the mailing lists of advocates were being sold to other related "cause" groups: "The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups. 'These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri,' says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. 'These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!'"

In contrast to earlier cases in which Protestant evangelicals made up most of the protesters, the Terri Schiavo case brought in many conservative Catholics as allies: "The Roman Catholic Church plans to establish its first religious society devoted exclusively to fighting euthanasia and abortion, church leaders said this week. [March 31, 2005] The male-only Missionaries of the Gospel of Life — founded by Father Frank A. Pavone, an outspoken opponent of abortion rights — will be housed in a vacant Catholic high school and dormitory on the grounds of the Diocese of Amarillo. The order will have a decidedly political bent, and will be active rather than contemplative, Pavone said. Its priests will be trained to conduct voter-registration drives, use the media to get out their antiabortion message and lobby lawmakers to restrict abortion rights. They also will learn to lead demonstrations outside offices where abortions and family-planning services are provided."