How America Was Sold on World War

Remembering George Creel, the founder of modern war propaganda

Brian Doherty | April 3, 2009

George Creel is largely forgotten in American history. In the first half of his career, he skipped from Georgism to civic reform activism and journalism; from writing jokes and comics for the Hearst newspapers to helping set up feckless reform organizations like the "National Fellowship of the University Militant."

Creel found his place in history running the Committee on Public Information (CPI), founded during President Woodrow Wilson's second term. CPI ran the most comprehensive and sophisticated program of war propaganda the world had yet seen, drafting historians, P.R. experts, journalists, and tens of thousands of ordinary citizens to harangue each other in movie theaters, or anywhere they could get a crowd. Long distrusted by more individualist and isolationist historians, Creel's story is told for the first time in over 60 years in the new book Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda by Alan Axelrod, a prolific author of popular histories from Patton on Leadership to The Real History of World War II.

Axelrod takes a nuanced view of a character easy to hate, given how he, as Axelrod notes, sought “the total monopolization of information, shaping news, shaping images, shaping emotions to create a reality in which President Wilson’s war emerged as not merely desirable but inevitable"; who propagandized for Wilson in 1916 as the man who kept us out of war, but within a year became an equally enthusiastic proselytizer for getting us into it.

Although the machinery of information control Creel created, buttressed with the legal powers of the Espionage Act and Sedition Act, helped send thousands of Americans to jail for speaking their minds, Axelrod on the whole came out seeing him as an honorable man seeking idealistic—though possibly wrongheaded—goals that he hoped would overtake the need for actual censorship.

Senior Editor Brian Doherty interviewed Axelrod by phone this week, discussing what Creel did and how, why it may have been a mistake, and how it’s unlikely another Creel could achieve what he did.

Reason: Who was George Creel, and why write (or read) a book about him?

Alan Axelrod: George Creel was a crusading journalist of the generation of muckrakers at the start of the 20th century. When President Wilson first ran for the White House in 1912 he became a passionate supporter. Wilson was a progressive reformer, and Creel wrote an entire book in defense of Wilson’s decision to avoid entering World War I. [Wilson and the Issues]

In 1916, Wilson ran on the slogan "he kept us out of war." When within a few weeks after Wilson was inaugurated for a second term he went to Congress to request a declaration of war, Creel offered his services to Wilson to help in any way he could. Wilson had initially wanted to impose absolute censorship on the press; he was concerned, he said, about espionage.

Creel countered that if censorship was imposed the government would lose the support of the people, and he proposed as a counter to this, in effect, complete control of the news—not censoring things but controlling what was released to the public. Not stopping anything from getting out but creating all of these stories that got out. Creel was put in charge of the newly created Committee of Public Information, the first ministry of propaganda the U.S. had ever had.

Within a very short time an organization of about 100,000 people, an instant bureau of the government, was in operation. Using various quite brilliant tactics that included recruiting the pioneers of the emerging industry of Public Relations—most significant among them Edward Bernays, pretty much the father of American P.R.—Creel created an organization that was responsible for virtually every scrap of info about the war that reached the American public and much of the world.

Reason: I detected a certain nuance, or even sympathy, toward Creel in your book, a character that lots of individualist historians have mistrusted and criticized. After all, who likes a professional "propagandist"?

Axelrod: As Creel saw "propaganda," it wasn't a bad thing. He defined it as creating the faithful in a good cause. World War I was a kind of quasi-religious endeavor. For Woodrow Wilson and I think for a lot of Americans, democracy is a kind of secular religion, linked to a God-given right to be free that is to be disseminated through the world and, if necessary, imposed on the world.

Creel believed this, and he believed Wilson’s problem was to sell what was essentially America's first ideological war. The U.S. wasn't directly menaced by Germany, but Wilson wanted to promote the idea that Germany was attacking democracy and therefore posed a threat to the U.S., and that it was the duty of the U.S. to promote democracy around the world. Propaganda became a way of managing—Creel would say of educating—the American people, a way of managing their perception of what was worth fighting for.

Reason: Did Creel seem of particular interest to you to write about in the Iraq War context?

Axelrod: My initial interest in Creel predated the Iraq War. He was a figure who had received very little attention, yet who single-handedly created a vast propaganda machine that was so impressive it became a model for the Nazis. Joseph Goebbels told a reporter who conveyed this to Edward Bernays, that Goebbles read all of Bernays books, and Hitler himself in Mein Kampf cited the propaganda efforts of America in World War I as a model for what propaganda would do.

Comments

|4.3.09 @ 4:08PM|#

I'm going to assume from now on that any picture of an ape or a monkey posted on Reason is a racist attack on Barack Obama.

|4.3.09 @ 4:08PM|#

That poster is Raaaaaaaciiiiiiiiiiiistttt!!!

Barry Loberfeld|4.3.09 @ 4:10PM|#

Published in the September 2004 issue of Liberty


To Refuse Allegiance to the State



An Open Letter to the National War Tax Resistance
Coordinating Committee




by Barry Loberfeld



To all people of goodwill in the NWTRCC:


One of the nice things about this past Christmas vacation was all the time I had to devote to things that really were about "peace on Earth."
Now I could finally read some of the stuff I had collected throughout the year,
such as the May-June issue of The Nonviolent Activist, the official "Magazine of the War Resisters League," which I'd picked up at a kind of poetry-and-politics cabaret hosted by PeaceSmiths, a Long Island antiwar group.

What struck me most was a one-page piece entitled "AN APPEAL TO CONSCIENCE: In Support of Those Refusing to Pay for War on Iraq" ("a project of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee"). It sped straight to the point of what war means: "death and disease" -- by bombing, shooting, and environmental poisoning -- for both soldiers and civilians in Iraq, as well as "terrorist attacks against the United States, its citizens, and those of any allies who join us." It also means "tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars, thus further diverting resources from addressing the hunger, homelessness, unemployment, and other economic problems facing millions of American families." The Appeal (which can be seen and signed at warresisters.org/wtr_complicity.htm) contended that "[p]re-emptive war against Iraq violates international laws, including the Charter of the United Nations, which the U.S. Constitution requires us to uphold" and suggested that "there are other, more peaceful and effective approaches to dealing with real threats posed by weapons of mass destruction." It concluded:

We believe that every citizen of this country has a moral duty to speak out against, and avoid cooperation with, this escalated war against Iraq -- and to encourage others to do the same.


Refusal to pay taxes used to finance unjust wars, along with refusal by soldiers to fight in them, is a direct and potentially effective form of citizen noncooperation, and one that governments cannot ignore. War tax refusal has a long and honorable tradition among religious and secular opponents of war ...


Refusal to pay all or a portion of one's federal taxes as a form of conscientious objection to war may involve personal risks. For that reason, material and moral support for war tax refusers -- including organizing support committees, raising support funds, and providing legal defense -- is an important form of war resistance in itself.





Therefore, we, the undersigned individuals, believing that war tax refusal under the present circumstances is fully justified on moral and ethical grounds, publicly declare our encouragement of, and willingness to lend support to, those persons of conscience who choose to take this step. [original emphasis]

Among the names listed were Joan Baez and Daniel Berrigan, William Sloane Coffin and Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

All of these persons are fully aware of the reasons given for going to war. They have heard prominent, accomplished individuals, both inside and outside the Administration, present empirical evidence and moral arguments. They have heard the War on Terrorism justified as a benefit to all people, including the Iraqis, and they have heard the accusations of "selfishness" and "indifference" hurled at those who've rejected this claim. They must surely acknowledge the possibility that this invasion of Iraq, like the earlier one, might garner the support of a majority of the population. And yet they defend the right of any dissenting individual, acting upon no more than his own judgment and ethics ("conscience"), to withhold his person and property from the war effort of the State.



The Appeal is a remarkable statement -- explicitly and implicitly. Consider. I oppose the War on Drugs. I disagree with those, inside and outside the government, who defend it. My own judgment of the evidence and my own moral code lead me to conclude that narcotics prohibition is a benefit to no one, that it has left many neighborhoods looking like actual combat zones. Even though poll after poll may show that a majority of Americans oppose legalization, don't I have a right to refuse "to pay all or a portion" of my "federal taxes as a form of conscientious objection" to this war?

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

Kolohe|4.3.09 @ 4:10PM|#

it's unlikely another Creel could achieve what he did.

Haven't rtfa yet, but is a part of the thesis that modern proganda is *less* effective than the 'old time religion'?

My gut check tells me to disagree.

CLS|4.3.09 @ 4:13PM|#

One excellent book on Creel and his Committe is by James Mock and Cedric Larson, published in 1939, and entitled "Words That Won the War."

Kid Blast|4.3.09 @ 4:18PM|#

@Barry Loberfeld

A paragraph or two with a link works well around here.

Thanks!

Kolohe|4.3.09 @ 4:19PM|#

The singular distinction of America is a preternatural ability for advertising and marketing, present from the beginning

The years have only honed this ability.

|4.3.09 @ 4:24PM|#

Michelle Obama's arms have their own blog.

I'm going home. I need a fucking drink.

|4.3.09 @ 4:25PM|#

I'm going to assume from now on that any picture of an ape or a monkey posted on Reason is a racist attack on Barack Obama.

Now if I can only drive NutraSweet away like joe...

|4.3.09 @ 4:27PM|#

I didn't say I disapproved...

(That's a joke, humorless assholes. You know who you are.)

Warty|4.3.09 @ 4:33PM|#

Those aren't guns. Is everyone in America so pathetically fat that we think pitiful straight biceps like those count as "guns"? Fuck this country and everyone in it. Fuck, I need a drink too.

Actually, I think I'll steal some syringes on the way home and inject Everclear into my balls. Fuck cock shit ass balls shit fuck.

|4.3.09 @ 4:33PM|#

Dear Zod, does this mean that Monkey Tuesday is racist? Egad.

By the way, Baked Penguin has jumped on the recent flag redesign proposal posted here and has redesigned the Florida flag. As a Floridian, I intend to adopt it immediately.

|4.3.09 @ 4:44PM|#

Warty, if you do that, I will give you five dollars. FIVE WHOLE DOLLARS.

You fuckers are 3 hours ahead of me, so I can't...wait, why can't I start drinking now?

Warty|4.3.09 @ 4:50PM|#

Unfortunately, Epi, I'm out of Everclear at the moment, so I'll need to drive to Camp Perry to get some at the PX. (That's a tip, fellow Ohioans: there is one store in the entire state where you can get Everclear, because it's on federal property). I should pick up an M1 Carbine at the CMP store while I'm at it.

I just wonder how difficult it is to handle a syringe, a steering wheel, and my balls at the same time.

|4.3.09 @ 4:54PM|#

Warty,

Easy, if you take some simple precautions.

|4.3.09 @ 4:55PM|#

I just wonder how difficult it is to handle a syringe, a steering wheel, and my balls at the same time.

Why do it yourself? That's what transvestite hookers are for. Come on, YOU KNOW THIS.

|4.3.09 @ 5:08PM|#

Like I said, precautions, though I don't know about the transvestite part. Eliot Spitzer's whore is out of work, I believe. Maybe she could do it?

Sinclair|10.30.09 @ 10:10PM|#

Or perhaps Mark Foley. He likey u vedddy much...

|4.3.09 @ 5:13PM|#

Ashley doesn't do bareback, ProL, so no good.

Warty|4.3.09 @ 5:18PM|#

If you break a few fingers first, I bet she will.

|4.3.09 @ 5:21PM|#

Toes, Warty. She needs those fingers for...stuff.

Warty|4.3.09 @ 5:24PM|#

I meant MY fingers. What kind of sick bastard are you, Epi?

|4.3.09 @ 5:26PM|#

Sheesh, they should just put this thread up for Friday Funnies. It would reaffirm my faith in their editors.

|4.3.09 @ 5:29PM|#

What kind of sick bastard are you, Epi?

The kind of sick bastard who watches The Last House on the Left. Duh.

Kolohe|4.3.09 @ 5:34PM|#

now that I've rtfa: good article.

But I still disagree with this contention:

If the government can get supposedly disinterested ordinary people, bloggers, to blog the party line...but I tend to doubt it could really work in the U.S.,

Despite the protestations elsewhere in the article that the Bush admin was so nakedly brazen about it, it was nonetheless effective for the most part (it at least got him a second term). Furthermore, this is exactly what Obama Admin is doing with continuing the 'Obama for America' blogs. Plus, newly appointed admin officials (like the new CBO head) continuing to blog in their official capacity similar to what they had done in their immediate previous employment.

And in one respect, it's far easier than anytime in the past, because of the willingness of various press people to simply regurgiate any old press release.

Art-P.O.G.|4.5.09 @ 6:10AM|#

Fuck cock shit ass balls shit fuck.

Warty is Jamie Kelly?

|4.5.09 @ 8:32AM|#

That pic is now my messenger icon

awsome pic!

|4.5.09 @ 11:21AM|#

is this it for discussion? What's happening to Hit & Run?

|4.7.09 @ 9:13PM|#

If the government can get supposedly disinterested ordinary people, bloggers, to blog the party line...but I tend to doubt it could really work in the U.S.

Oh heavens, has he not heard of his namesake Axelrod's blog-comment astroturf operation, propagandizing The One's agenda? I'm sure it's still in operation, now that Oprompta has taken over the government, like some kind of vile prion.

Of course he has. So I can only conclude he favors such an operation. Truth, schmuth. It's all about the higher good. Heh heh.

Boy, talk about a case of Stockholm syndrome. Good thing this fool didn't write a book about the 9/11 attackers.

Sinclair|10.30.09 @ 10:11PM|#

Ah, but a manifesto was written; it was called "Rebuilding AMerica's Defenses"

pay close attention to pps 50-70. A long read but very enlightening!