What is subtle advertising? Perhaps you noticed at times, while watching a regular movie, the display of a consumer product such as a soft drink sitting on the table of your favorite star.
The producers of the movie
will be happy to know you noticed because they get paid to do this kind of
subtle advertising. But they will not be distressed either if you didn't
notice, because there will always be a subliminal effect on you that will
result in increased sales of the product as time moves on.
Whereas this kind of subtlety
started in the movies, it quickly spilled into the realm of political
propaganda. It is happening at the domestic level, especially at election time.
It is happening at the international level throughout the year where broadcast
that's financed by the American government, stealthily pushes the idea that
Israel is in the process of saving humanity from itself.
You'll find evidence of this
kind of nonsense in an article that came under the title: “Bring Back the War
of Ideas,” written by Christian Whiton, and published on January 14, 2021 in
The National Interest.
Christian Whiton is a member
of the board of directors of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia,
and Middle East Broadcast Networks. He may or may not believe that in this age
of satellite television, the internet and the other social media, radio
broadcasting is making a dent in the liberation of the oppressed nations of the
world, but it is in his financial and career interests to promote the idea to
his fellow Americans. This is why you find a blurb below the title of the
article which says the following:
“Journalists play a critical
role in liberating the world. Factual news about what America's adversaries are
doing to their people and neighbors is as important as ever because it
frustrates those governments and creating hope for a future with the rule of
law and accountable government”.
When you go through the rest
of the article, you discover that the pompous exaggeration in the blurb, pales
by comparison to what else Christian Whiton is saying about what he describes
as, “America's modern apparatus for disseminating information to the detriment
of its opponents.” He makes these points by first identifying the three heads
appointed to run the three divisions of the apparatus.
One of the appointees is Ted
Lipien who will head Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He was born in Poland and
immigrated to the United States in the early 1970s when he was a teenager, and
Poland was still a Communist country and member of the Warsaw Pact. It did not
take Ted Lipien long to find his way to Voice of America (VOA) where he became
radio announcer in the network's Polish Service.
A decade before Lipien traveled
to America, I was in Egypt, an avid listener of shortwave radio. My favorite
stations were VOA and the BBC as well as the dozen or so anti-Nasser pirate
stations, among them the one that identified itself as radio Israel. I
respected VOA and the BBC, and found the pirate stations out of touch with the
reality I was living and observing around me in Egypt. As to the Israeli
station, it was wall-to-wall, “hate your Arab government and love Israel”
propaganda that did not move me or anyone I knew.
Thinking about the situation
now, I find it probable that VOA and the BBC were viewed around the world the
way that I did at the time. When we came to Canada, I no longer had a shortwave
radio, but my father had one, and I would listen to VOA whenever I visited him.
I found it to be the same as when I was in Egypt, but then things changed after
October of 1973. That's when the Egyptian army kicked the Jews out of the
Sinai. Gradually, I could sense the Judeo-Israeli influence in the VOA
presentations.
When Communism was dissolved
and Lech Walesa became Poland's president, he visited Israel and apologized
because the Poles, like the other Eastern Europeans, were told that to get
financial help from America, they must kiss the ring of Israeli leaders. Now,
thirty years later, things have changed so much that politicians running for
office in those countries go out of their way to prove they have no Jewish
blood in them. This is how much things have changed in the former members of
the Warsaw Pact, and this is how much they drifted away from America and the
Jews.
Knowing that they lost the war
of ideas, Ted Lipien and Christian Whiton are trying to revive the days when
the leaders of the former Communist countries were honored to put their hands on
those of America's politicians. They are doing it using the method of subtle
advertising. Here is an example: “Lech Walesa put his hand on then-Senator Joe
Biden and said, 'Thank Radio Free Europe and the Holy Father’”.
The subliminal message here is
two-pronged. It tells America (that badly needs friends at this time) it can
have friends as good as Poland was when Walesa was president. And it tells
Poland that has the potential to become an economic giant, that Catholic Joe
Biden is now President of the United States, and he can do much to help it
become the economic leader it wants to be inside the European Union.
No one in Europe may ever again listen to freedom propaganda from American radio, but Christian Whiton wants another chance at fighting this battle.