It’s a common misconception that propaganda must be consciously created. The campaign posters for this year’s poppy appeal show how good intentions can have deeply ideological consequences.
The simplest form of propaganda is omission. How can you not feel sympathy for someone who has had their legs blown off? How can you not pity the war widow left to struggle on a pittance? The easiest way of course is not to know about them. That's exactly how our pity and sympathy for the victims of our invasions are kept in check. We’re not told much, so we don’t care much.
With the noblest of intentions, one consequence of the poppy campaign is to elicit selective sympathy. It focuses our grief on one specific group of casualties – no surprise, our own. Meanwhile the victims of our invasions slip further from view, perhaps further despised for bringing this tragedy upon 'our boys'.
Exclusive focus on our own soldiers is of course the current media method of dealing with the hell we have made of Afghanistan and Iraq. For those who supported these invasions reporting their true horror and failure would mean admitting complicity. So roll on the squaddies, let the tragedy be theirs. Rather than the criminality of the invasion all attention turns to the plight of Tommy Atkins. Rather than failed states and piles of civilian corpses, the tragedy becomes one of shoddy equipment and shitty living conditions.
It’s Vietnam all over again. You rain hell down on civilian populations and then paint the whole thing as a tragedy sustained by your own side. Hopefully, you eventually withdraw.
For Tony Blair's sake wear a Poppy?
Which brings us to a second sphere of unintended propaganda. Another awful consequence of wearing a poppy is that it may assist the ambitions of those who send armies off into immoral adventures.
The danger is of a sort of morality by association. By honouring all soldiers of all wars, immoral wars are given a boost. While clearly there is something noble about risking your life to save others, it’s far more questionable whether it is noble to risk your life for a lie – even if you sincerely believed the lie. It is simply not true that Iraq or Afghanistan were invaded to bring democracy, or find weapons of mass destruction, or save western civilisation. The fact that many of the invading soldiers believed these lies has no bearing on the matter.
By honouring all soldiers of all wars the line between moral and immoral wars is blurred. Leaders who wage war out of avarice and ego are falsely associated with those who fight and die for more noble reasons. At worst, perhaps the next immoral adventure gets a boost, and more civilian and military lives are extinguished.
Of course it is truly shameful that those who sacrifice so much are treated so badly on their return home. If we do ‘owe our freedom’ to these people then why is this begging bowl approach necessary, why doesn't the state cover the cost? If these invasions are carried out for moral reasons, why doesn't the moral responsibility extend to the dead and injured?
The awful but obvious answer is that governments don't really care about soldiers. They need them for protection of property, and to assist with the acquisition of other peoples’ property, but they are as expendable today as they were to the Duke of Wellington. Sadly there's usually plenty more cannon-fodder to hand.
