lies and prejudices promote war…

Over 70 years ago, British diplomat Lord Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) wrote in his book Falsehood in Wartime about the perennial propaganda claims of wartime leaders. Belgian historian Anne Morelli has recently shed fresh light on Ponsonby’s analysis, distilling his findings on wartime propaganda into 10 principles as follows:

1.     We do not want war;
2.     The other side is solely responsible for the war;
3.     The enemy has the face of the devil;
4.     It is a noble cause that we defend and not particular interests;
5.     The enemy commits atrocities knowingly; if we make unfortunate mistakes, it is involuntary;
6.     The enemy uses unauthorized weapons;
7.     We suffer very few losses, while the losses of the enemy are enormous;
8.     Artists and intellectuals support our cause;
9.     Our cause has a sacred nature;
10.   Those who question our statements are traitors.

Lies and prejudices promote war, and war in turn promotes lies and prejudices.

(Translated from French. Anne Morelli, Principes elementaires de propagande de guerre (Elementary Principles of War Propaganda) (Brussels: Éditions Labor, 2001). ((Dr. Jan Øberg, Director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF)  from the Essay Series, “Life is Wonderful” (Translated from the November 10, 2002 issue of the Seikyo Shimbun, the Soka Gakkai daily newspaper, Daisaku Ikeda Essay Series))