#513 - Producing Killers and Selling Wars (Why Any Mother's Son will Do)

This week's show starts with an adaptation for radio of Gwynne Dyer's 1983 Canadian mini-series, Any Mother's Son Will Do, about the creation of killers. It parallels Disciplined Minds by unmasking the big lie that basic military training is primarily about skills. Instead it reveals its fundamental role as an indoctrination process that breaks down the recruits' separate identities and rebuilds them in its own image, as professional killers. The first hour concludes with Propaganda 101, an episode of History Counts. Ken McDermot Roe interviews professor Mark Crispin Miller, professor of culture and communications at New York University, about modern propaganda techniques from their origins during World War I. Professor Miller considers the seminal work on propaganda of George Creel, who ran the U.S. Committee on Public Information during World War I; Edward Bermays, public relations genius and consultant on government covert ops, and Walter Lippmann renowned journalist who called for the "manufacture of the consent" of the people to government policy.

Propaganda 101 continues into the second hour. The show concludes with an abridged adaptation of Operation Hollywood, a film by Emilio Pacull. This film follows up David Robb's investigation into the collaboration between Hollywood and the Pentagon. Movie studios can save millions of dollars by securing use of military stock footage, equipment and manpower, provided that their script depicts the US armed forces in a favorable way and promotes war as an acceptable solution. It concludes by looking at the Pentagon's collaboration with the creators of video games to implant pro-war messages for young minds: "It's not that join the army get to sit on your ass in the desert and eventually get blown up, it's join the army and you'll have access to the coolest technology you've ever seen."