Documentary on CNA, part three/ Mass control and propaganda

2025-11-18 20:37:00, Aktualitet CNA

CNA TV has acquired exclusive rights from renowned professor and scholar of history and geopolitics, Stephen Kotkin, to broadcast his academic lectures. This is one of the first cases in Albania where a media outlet broadcasts a university lecture of this level.

Tonight, the third part of the documentary titled "Mass Control and Propaganda" is being broadcast on CNA TV.

Stephen Kotkin's lecture

It's not a small challenge, but it's not enough to demobilize potential opponents, you have to raise the cost of opposition as high as possible, fines, prison sentences, job losses, children being expelled from school, no visas to go abroad, right? Raise the standards, the costs against the opposition, against political mobilization. This is known as demobilizing the opposition, this is really important, but this is not enough, because sometimes the costs are really high and people pay them anyway and then what do you do?

The answer is point number three, you have to be able to mobilize people in the streets, right? You need your crowd or the mobilized crowd ready to go into action as a pro-regime mobilization. This is a point that is not well understood, in Iran in the summer of 2009, there were 3 million people in the streets of Tehran, 3 million, that's a pretty big number, mobilized by the opposition, 3 million demanding change. That regime didn't give up, it's still there, three years later, there were all kinds of words and predictions that that regime was in trouble, but that regime is able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of its supporters, the so-called "Basij", the so-called revolutionary guards, various militia groups, some of whom are there because they are paid and most of whom are there because they have a belief system and they are paid, it's always good when these things align.

So you have to be able to mobilize serious crowds. Anyone who doesn't have pro-regime mobilization is no longer in the game in authoritarianism, because they think your thugs are ready to act, they think you've paid them all off and you've blown them up, they've been fed like turkeys for the holidays and there's no problem and nobody's going to take to the streets because you're going to kick their kids out of school or you're going to cut their visas and they're not going to be able to go to London for the next semester or whatever it is and then all of a sudden, the streets are filled with, people all of a sudden. So you have to be able to get your people out on the streets in so-called counter-demonstrations, pro-regime mobilization.

Okay, fourth, the fourth characteristic of authoritarian regimes, you'll see where this is going if you'll bear with me, I'm not that far off. You have to be able to manipulate or better yet control your opportunities in life. This is really important, manipulating or controlling your opportunities in life, isn't it? Here in the United States, we basically have three paths: college or university, you're on that path, right? College or university, that's the path you're on. The military, that's the other path. Sometimes paths one and two overlap, but often they don't, but the military is a place where people go, get a job, and get skills. And the third path that we have in our society is prison, these are the three basic paths of society in the United States, college, university, the military, and prison. I'm simplifying it a little bit, but if you look at the numbers, that includes almost everyone.

So if you can manipulate entry or non-entry into one of these life paths, for example, if you can control entry into university, you have a huge lever of power over your social system. If you can grant or even better deny entry into university, that's a really big deal. If you can grant or deny entry into elite military units, that's a really big deal. If you can grant and deny travel abroad because you have an exit visa regime, right? Manipulating or controlling opportunities in life is a tremendous tool for an authoritarian regime. Those who are unable, even in a small way, to manipulate opportunities in life find themselves losing control of the situation and disappear.

Now regimes are, societies are complex, but from the top, from the perspective of an authoritarian regime, if you're reading with me the manual on how to be an authoritarian regime, which is what I'm presenting to you today, it actually doesn't seem that complex, you have a certain number of universities and a certain number of places in the university and there's a president or a rector of that university and you can call that person into your office and explain the procedures for getting into that university. Employees are subject to the orders of the state and so if you have a good state-owned company, maybe it's an oil company, maybe it's a chemical company, maybe it's just a car company, you're going to need a lot of managers there, so you can give people management positions or you can give them no management positions, so the more nationalized your economy is, the more control you can potentially have over life chances.

Okay, that was point number four. If things are scarce, and if they are state-owned, you have power. You can do anything. It could be rationing milk. It could go all the way down to the level of basic foods in the diet that you can control if you have control mechanisms all the way down to well-organized, mobilized community leaders. Anyway, rewarding loyalty and punishing disloyalty, housing, even milk, as I said.

Okay. Fifth, you have to have influence, better yet control over the mainstream media, you have to own or manage the TV stations, that's just an absolute must, the internet is now a must too, it used to be something desirable, but now for an authoritarian regime, it's an absolute must. Now it's great if you can voluntarily gather armies of people to enforce censorship and control over the internet on nationalistic grounds, but that's hard work. It's like a 24/7 job. You have to spread your story and you have to block other stories, right? Because censorship is both the denial of certain forms of information and thought, and the promotion of certain forms of information, right? Censorship has a proactive dimension, not a simple one. If you don't have control over the public sphere, you're playing with fire. You don't have to have 100% control. There can be all sorts of pockets of things that happen that you don't control. Small market magazines, small TV stations that nobody watches, right? Newspapers that nobody reads, that you don't need to control, you can save resources if you have limited resources in controlling the public sphere. By the way, after this lecture, you're going to get a certificate and you're going to go try it out in one of your authoritarian regimes. You're going to go try it out in real life, that's part of the reason you got into Dartmouth. I do this myself at Princeton, I'm the associate dean of the school of politics.

Okay, sixth, you need to have a narrative, you need to have a story about who you are, and it needs to have some support in society, you need to have a well, and that well needs to be a place where you can definitely go when you're in trouble and lower the bucket and pull some great story out of there. The story of foreign subversion, that's a great story, right, someone from the outside trying to attack you, foreign subversion is incredible, especially if it's related to strange-looking people inside your country, like ethnic or religious minorities, right? That's a great thing to have in the well, you can pull it out whenever you want. Credible external threat, the IMF, that's great, it works for almost any regime, the IMF, look what they're trying to do to us, they're trying to take away our sovereignty, they're trying to make us do things for their benefit, the US, anyone you were at war with in the 12th or 11th century. It's all down that well, you're going to put the bucket in and lift it up.

NGOs that receive foreign grants, NGOs, what is this? Does anyone believe that they are truly non-governmental, that they do not take orders from governments that give them grants that fund them and then come to our country and try to subvert our values ??and try to make our young people work for them. The naive liberals, that is also big, that is also always in the bucket, they are always a subversive force, they think they are doing good, but they are paid by foreigners and they are subverting our country. The naive liberals are big. Anyway, you get the idea, right?/ CNA