When Geopolitics becomes Moral Panic

Abstract

This article analyses how geopolitics was used to create moral panic during Salvador Allende’s government in Chile (1970–1973) and examines the type of recursive devices—such as geopolitical strategic narratives—that were employed by El Mercurio to advance specific discourses that intended to undermine the legitimacy of Allende while mobilising the public agenda towards the political right. Our thesis is that this was done by selective and framed use of international news in ways that somehow created moral panics by bringing geopolitics into the realm of the general public. In so doing, El Mercurio invisibilised important elements and effects of US Foreign Policy while highlighting similar elements and effects of the Soviet Foreign Policy. Our thesis is that in doing so, Allende’s government became associated with the ‘Red Scare’ and subsequently associated with the communist threat. This theme, we argue, remains relevant in times in which there continues to be a prevalent strategic narrative of enemies and foes in international news that continues to be used to create fear and mobilise public opinion towards the right of the political spectrum.

KEYWORDS:

• Chile
• El Mercurio
• moral panics
• propaganda
• international news

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Francisco Javier Alvear http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0841-901X

Jairo Lugo-Ocando http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9533-2088

Notes

1 As pointed out by Franco, The Decline and Fall and Saunders The Cultural Cold War.

2 See Waisbord, Reinventing Professionalism, 39.

3 Davis, The Last Two Years and Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende, offer a detailed account of the efforts to stop Allende’s rise to power, which included all types of dirty campaigns and orchestrated propaganda.

4 For additional details about this, see Goldberg, “The Politics”; Kornbluh, Chile and the US and Sigmund, Chile.

5 See Délano, Luengo, and Salazar, Para entender al Decano and Mattelart, Mattelart, and Piccini, Los medios de comunicación.

6 As suggested by Power, “Who but a Woman?” and Sigmund, Chile.

7 This is the term that historians such as Hagedorn, Savage Peace; Schrecker, Many are the Crimes and Pilger, The Colder War, agree was mostly used to define the communist threat coming from the Soviet Union. The first one in the 1920s and the second one in the 1950s.

8 According to Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle, Strategic Narratives, these narratives aim at framing the political debate in geo-political terms.

9 Among whom it is worth mentioning Délano, Luengo, and Salazar, Para entender al Decano and Sunkel, El Mercurio como medio.

10 On this point, see Garay Vera, El Mercurio and Lagos, El diario de Agustín.

11 See Alvear, La verdad sobre “El Mercurio”; Durán, El Mercurio contra la Unidad Popular; Fagen, “The Media in Allende's Chile”; Garay Vera, El Mercurio and Garcés, Chile, 1973.

12 See Durán, El Mercurio contra la Unidad Popular.

13 Including many Western developed countries, as Klein, The Shock Doctrine and Pain, “Globalized Fear?” have suggested.

14 To understand better how language changes but the meaning remains the same in these cases, it is worth looking at the work of Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism and Wodak, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis.

15 This is still considered one of the most important documentaries about this subject. It was originally broadcasted by the BBC and directed by Adam Curtis.

16 As a series of authors such as Boczkowski and De santos, “When More Media Equals Less,” and Carpenter, “A Study of Content Diversity” have suggested, today, we have more channels but actually less news content is being produced.

17 Lippmann, Public Opinion, used this term in 1922.

18 As suggested by authors such as Chong, “Al-Jazeera and US War” and Yablokov, “Conspiracy Theories.”

19 For a more comprehensive discussion on this, please see Kielbowicz, “Modernization, Communication Policy”; Mody, The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News and Smith, The geopolitics of information.

20 On this point, see Kim, Su, and Hong, “The Influence of Geopolitics” and Vujakovic, “Mapping the War Zone.”

21 This has been widely corroborated with evidence by authors such as Howard Friel and Richard A. Falk, The Record of the Paper and Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, in their studies of the New York Times.

22 Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 29.

23 See Anthony Read, The World on Fire.

24 See Maras, Objectivity in Journalism, 130.

25 Particularly among women as Power, “Who but a Woman?” suggests in her study.

26 The works in this area from authors such as Cohen, Folk Devils; Hier, Moral Panic and Thompson, Moral Panics all refer to crime.

27 As underlined by authors such as Bourke, Fear and Robin, Fear.

28 On this point, see Plamper and Lazier, “The Phobic Regimes.”

29 A concept used by authors such as Beck, La Sociedad del Riesgo; Bernstein, Against the Gods and Luhmann, Communication and Social Order.

30 I refer here to the historical accounts given by Hagedorn, Savage Peace and Read, The World on Fire.

31 For more on this historical account, see Altheide, Creating Fear.

32 Authors such as Goode, Moral Panics and Ungar, “Moral Panics” provide a very detailed account of how this happened during that era.

33 On this point, see Fried, McCarthyism and Schrecker, Many are the Crimes.

34 Freeland, Truman Doctrine, offers a comprehensive description of this.

35 See Theoharis, Seeds of Repression.

36 As Fried, Nightmare in Red and Mitchell, Tricky Dick remind us in relation to Nixon.

37 Which indeed became a political framework for years to come as Chilcote, “Post-Marxism” and Franco, The Decline and Fall, have pointed out.

38 This body of research includes the works of Althaus and Tewksbury, “Agenda Setting”; Golan, “Inter-media Agenda Setting” and Wanta and Hu, “The Agenda-setting Effects.”

39 These frameworks were developed by authors such as Chang, Shoemaker, and Brendlinger, “Determinants of International News”; Galtung and Ruge, Structure of Foreign News and Harcup and O’neill, “What is News?”

40 Among whom we could cite Díaz Rangel, Pueblos sub-informados; Lozano et al., International News; Mayorga Rojel, “Las noticias internacionales” and Porath, María Constanza Mujica, and Maldonado, Procesos de producción.

41 Among which we should highlight Délano, Luengo, and Salazar, Para entender al Decano and Mattelart, Mattelart, and Piccini, Los medios de comunicación.

42 See Sunkel, El Mercurio como medio, 101.

43 Krippendorff. Content Analysis.

44 See Krippendorff, Content Analysis, 24.

45 As pointed out by Curran, “The New Revisionism” and Lugo-Ocando, Olga, and Andrés, “Framing Revolution.”

46 Such as Krippendorff, Content Analysis; Matthes and Kohring, “The Content Analysis” and Riff, Lacy, and Fico, Analyzing Media Messages.

47 See Kress and Van Leeuwen, Front Pages.

48 Mattelart, Mattelart, and Piccini, Los medios de comunicación, 83.

49 See Conboy, Language of the News, 97.

50 As pointed out by White, “The “Gate Keeper”,” 383.

51 Both Boyd-Barret, International News Agencies, 12 and Díaz Rangel, Pueblos sub-informados, 173 offer evidence for this.

52 This is made explicitly clear in the documentary ‘El Diario de Agustin from first-hand testimonies of those interviewed.

53 See Mattelart, Mattelart, and Piccini, Los medios de comunicación, 59.

54 Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 39.

55 These studies include the works of Boyd-Barret, The International News Agencies; Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy; Diaz Rangel, Pueblos sub-informados; Mayorga Rojel, “Las noticias internacionales” and Weaver and Cleveland Wilhoit, Foreign News.

56 See Lugo-Ocando, Modern Conflicts in Latin America, 38.

57 See Garcés, Allende y la experiencia, 263.

58 Published in El Mercurio on 8 July 1973, 3.

59 As conceptualised by Gee, Introduction to Discourse Analysis, 72.

60 We are referring here to the works of Chang, Shoemaker, and Brendlinger, “Determinants of International News”; Galtung and Ruge, Structure of Foreign News and van Dijk, Discurso y Poder.

61 See Maras, Objectivity ion Journalism, 130.

62 Quoted by Délano, Luengo, and Salazar, Para entender al Decano, 30.

63 See Mattelart, Mattelart, and Piccini, Los medios de comunicación.

64 See van Dijk, Discurso y Poder, 369.

65 Something has also been emphasised in the literature. See Moss, Chile's Marxist Experiment.

66 Salazar, Conversaciones con Carlos Altamirano.

67 For a comprehensive perspective on how similar campaigns were deployed in Europe, see Miller, “Taking Off the Gloves” and Samatas, “Greek McCarthyism.”

68 Documentary on Salvador Allende.

69 Cole, “The New McCarthyism.”

70 The letter was in response to the news coverage given to the expulsion of the Bolivian-based guerrilla group Ñancahuazú by the Frei administration. Ñancahuazú had entered Chilean territory escaping from a coordinated operation between the Bolivian army and the CIA to capture Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. Needless to say that the Chilean government was cooperating with that operation.

71 In Arrate and Hidalgo, Pasión y razón del socialismo, 430.

72 See Corvalán, El gobierno de Allende and Martínez, Salvador Allende.