“Perception management” came to prominence during the Reagan administration[1], which used the term to describe its propaganda efforts. […] On March 1, 2022, the Pentagon established a new office with similar goals to the one once deemed too controversial to remain open. […] its responsibilities include overseeing and coordinating the various counter-disinformation efforts being conducted by the military, which can include the U.S.’s own propaganda abroad.
[a]ctions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.
Let’s look at a definition of “propaganda”,
A concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people.
That looks about 100% on the nose, doesn’t it?
They have a history of producing propaganda and misinformation (with the excuse being “to counter enemy disinformation”[2]), and they weren’t shy talking about it,
The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. […] The military has faced these tough issues before. Nearly three years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence, a short-lived operation to provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion. […] Pentagon and military officials directly involved in the debate say that such a secret propaganda program, for example, could include planting news stories in the foreign press or creating false documents and Web sites translated into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that preach anti-American principles. […] However, a senior military officer said that without clear guidance from the Pentagon, the military’s psychological operations, information operations and public affairs programs are “coming together on the battlefield like never before, and as such, the lines are blurred.”
Mind you, I’ve only touched on some of their work in the very recent past. There’s an even larger body of evidence of the USA’s use of propaganda in the slightly more distant past. I only gave the Wikipedia page on propaganda in the United States a brief skim, but it at least touches on (and links out to) some of the big picture items; of note,
In the United States, propaganda is spread by both government and media entities.
“In the battle of perception management, where the enemy is clearly using the media to help manage perceptions of the general public, our job is not perception management but to counter the enemy’s perception management,” said the chief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita. (Source) ↩︎
There’s a new propaganda department at the Pentagon that’s just been re-formed, the “Perception Management” office,
In case you think the name is of no import, the Department of Defense’s own official dictionary defines “perception management” as
Let’s look at a definition of “propaganda”,
That looks about 100% on the nose, doesn’t it?
They have a history of producing propaganda and misinformation (with the excuse being “to counter enemy disinformation”[2]), and they weren’t shy talking about it,
Mind you, I’ve only touched on some of their work in the very recent past. There’s an even larger body of evidence of the USA’s use of propaganda in the slightly more distant past. I only gave the Wikipedia page on propaganda in the United States a brief skim, but it at least touches on (and links out to) some of the big picture items; of note,
“In the battle of perception management, where the enemy is clearly using the media to help manage perceptions of the general public, our job is not perception management but to counter the enemy’s perception management,” said the chief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita. (Source) ↩︎
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/28/the-victory-of-perception-management/ ↩︎