During the Second World War, one man recalls,
Our bulletins in German were the most objective sober bulletins of all that were put out by the BBC. We could not afford to be caught in any inaccuracy. The German listeners would not swallow anything, because they were on the lookout to prove us liars. We had to be 101 percent accurate. We had to claim less than we actually did.
There is nothing more effective than saying that there has been a moderately severe raid on Essen, when 2,000 people have actually been killed. That sort of thing gives the enemy cold shivers.
The speaker quoted (with emphasis added) is Richard Crossman, who headed the German Section of Britain's Political Warfare Executive during the middle part of the war.
It's a fascinating historical note, but what does it have to do with us?
Troubled Waters
In these turbulent waters, credibility is key. A single exaggeration or error can destroy your reputation. "We had to be 101 percent accurate."
Understatement, on the other hand, engenders trust and communicates a kind of cool competence.
This may not give the enemy "cold shivers," but it wins allies, and reassures
them that the cause is in good hands.
Crossman wasn't being nice, or ethical, or genteel. He was fighting Nazis.
Good at it, too.
How it's done
The former president, last night, in response to these subpoenas that were announced by the January 6th Committee, said that he was going to assert executive privilege. He’s not in the executive branch anymore, so I don’t think he can do that.
The questioner went on to ask whether the former P had "reached out" to the
White House about that.
What a softball! Psaki could have recapped the horrific events of January 6, cast shade on the clueless egotism of a man who is no longer president, or called out the previous administration as a failed authoritarian regime on the run from the law. Pow.
Yet she did none of those things. Instead, she replied (in part)
Well, I’m not aware of any outreach.... I would say that we take this matter incredibly seriously. The President has already concluded that it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege.
This cool, low-key response garnered plenty of headlines, while projecting confidence, competence, and power.
Crossman, and Comey
The quote, about how to use those assets, was in an essay by David Comey, an environmental activist who had attended a lecture by Crossman in 1953.
Comey died in 1979.
"It Is the Understatement Which Succeeds Best" is but one of Crossman's seven "principles of successful propaganda" as recorded by Comey.
"The Key to Successful Propaganda is Accurate Information" and "The Propaganda Must Be Credible to the Other Side, Not Your Own" are two others.
The essay originally took the form of an address to the Atomic Industrial Forum.
Comey's title was advice that, I suspect, he knew the nuclear industry would never heed: "Tell the Truth."
Notes
The Political Warefare Executive was a secret British body organized in 1941 to coordinate propaganda efforts against Germany. It engaged in both "white" and "black" propaganda.
One source says Crossman thought at least some of the "black" operations, which included what we now call disinformation, were probably not effective.
Comey's essay, "Tell the Truth," is preserved online (by the Rocky Mountain Institute) as it was (apparently) originally presented to the Atomic Industrial Forum's annual conference in 1975.
I encountered it in an issue of Not Man Apart (9:6, 14–15), until 1990
the journal of the
Friends of the Earth.
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