THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT AS COMMUNICATION CHANNEL

With the social organization as a communication device we reach the heart and the power of the NLF. Here lay the solution to the mystery that for so long puzzled knowledgeable and thinking Americans: How could the NLF achieve success in the face of overwhelming GVN military superiority and massive inputs of American material resources for civic action programs to alleviate economic grievances? Not superior ideology, not more dedicated personnel, not because voluntary support of the villager had been won, but the social movement shaped into a selfcontained, self-supporting channel of communication-that was the NLF's secret weapon.

Working from the fundamental assumption that if an idea could be rooted in the group it would become strong, durable, and infinitely more difficult to counter, the NLF created a communication structure far beyond any simple propaganda organization and plunged to depths far below mere surface acceptance of a message by an individual. In the hands of the agit-prop cadres the social movement as a communicational device made these contributions to the NLF cause:

1. It generated a sense of community, first, by developing a pattern of political thought and behavior appropriate to the social problems of the rural Vietnamese village in the midst of sharp social change and, second, by providing a basis for group action that allowed the individual villager to see that his own efforts could have meaning and effect.

2. As an organizational armature, it mobilized the people, generating discontent where it did not exist, exacerbating and harnessing it where it did, and increasing especially at the village level the saliency of all the NLF appeals.

3. It altered to at least some degree the villager's information input, perception of the world, attitude toward government, and daily actions in and out of the village. It changed underlying beliefs and even caused villagers to do things to their own disadvantage.

4. In a self-reinforcing manner it fostered integration of the NLF belief system, turning heterogeneous attitudes into homogeneous ones; the social facilitation or interstimulation that resulted canalized and intensified village feelings, reactions, and aims. Thus even when the NLF organization turned coercive as it finally did, members continued to hold imported and alien values and norms.

5. It greatly facilitated the NLF's efforts to polarize beliefs, stereotype anti-NLF forces, and generally shift. villagers' attention in the directions chosen by the NLF leadership. As does any social organization, it caused the villager to rationalize more easily, being influenced by those around him. Since resistance to suggestion, that is, critical judgment, is lower within a group, it caused him to accept spurious arguments more easily and to succumb more quickly to emotional or personal appeals by the cadres and the village NLF leaders. Once critical judgment was impaired, the villager soon came to confuse desire with conviction.

6. Once momentum in the group was developed, the group itself tended to restrict freedom of expression to the sentiments acceptable, to the NLF-created group norms. The individual became submerged, the group became the unit, and great social pressure was brought to bear against the deviant, thus achieving the ultimate NFL objective-a selfregulating, self-perpetuating revolutionary force.

7. Finally, because it helped cut social interaction and communication with the social system represented by the GVN, it isolated the villagers and heightened the sense of conflict between the two systems.

The significance of the social movement as a communicational device and the contribution it made to the NLF effort cannot be stated too strongly. Its essential importance was clearly grasped by the NLF from the earliest days, the result of lessons learned in the Viet Minh war. A 1961 document declared:

An enlightened people if unorganized cannot be a force to deal with the enemy. . Therefore organization of the masses is essential, it facilitates our cause in all ways.... The [social movement] provides a strong force to oppose the enemy, it makes the Party's task much easier, [and] it both provides an audience for the agit-prop cadre and facilitates further agit-prop work. The [social movement] is a measure of our physical and moral strength, it is a practical way of both serving the people's interests and guaranteeing Party leadership among the people, it is the decisive element in the Revolution.

What the NLF leadership realized—and was all too poorly understood in the United States-was that social organizations are especially potent communication devices in underdeveloped countries. Yet the process is in no way alien to Americans, with their proclivity for the voluntary organization. The Boy Scout movement, for example, transmits and inculcates a whole complex of beliefs, the scope of which is indicated by the twelve Scout laws. A college fraternity can heavily indoctrinate an impressionable youth, shape his political beliefs and economic values, even dictate what sort of a wife to choose. This is done not as a premeditated brainwashing scheme but simply as a by-product function of the organizational essence or nature of its being. What the NLF did was deliberately to create such an organizational structure specifically to transmit information, data, ideals, beliefs, and values.

THE AGIT-PROP TEAM

The Communist institution of the agit-prop cadre is generally well known but little understood by Americans. Its utility to the NLF was so great that it has been singled out from other communication methods for special consideration here. Let us begin by inspecting the visit of a hypothetical NLF agit-prop team to a Vietnamese village.

The team approaches in late afternoon and has a rendezevous outside the hamlet with a Party member or sympathizer who carefully briefs it on developments in the village or hamlet since the team's last visit; he lists the local grievances, local animosities, the most disliked persons in the village.

At dusk the team enters the hamlet with a great deal of fanfare,

shaking hands, greeting people, carrying with it an aura of excitement, a break in the village monotony. Villagers are asked to assemble voluntarily at some central location. One old man, known to be irascible and intractable, announces loudly he'll be damned if he'll listen to a bunch of agitators. The team chief ostentatiously excuses him. However, should a sizable number of villagers indicate reluctance to attend, the team chief grows stern and indicates by gesture and manner that it would be well to give the memebers of the Revolution at least an opportunity to present their message. So the villagers gather.

The session begins with a short talk by the team chief in which he mixes flattery of the villagers' spirit, sympathy for their plight, and the hint that he will present later a message of great importance.

An interlude of singing and quasi-entertainment follows. The team chief or one of the members leads the villagers in a traditional folk song known and loved by all South Vietnamese. When it ends, the song leader announces that he has written new words to the old melody that he would like to teach the villagers. He receites the verse, which carries a class consciousness and revolutionary message, and after the villagers learn the words, he leads them through it several times.

Then comes the main speech, lasting up to an hour. The team chief has previously received from the interzone agit-prop section a directive outlining current themes to be stressed; they are biological warfare and cholera in an anti-American context. These are carefully fixed to local grievances. He tells the villagers: "Your harvest this year was not so large as in years past. The reason for this is that the Americans are conducting in South Vietnam something called defoliation. Strange chemicals are sprayed from airplanes, killing crops and foliage instantly. It is true that no planes have been seen, for none has sprayed within fifty kilometers of the village. But these chemicals can be carried vast distances, even halfway around the world, by the wind. What has happened is that some of the noxious chemicals have drifted over the village and fallen on the crops, stunting their growth and causing a lower yield." It is also believed by the villagers that there is cholera in the village. "This isn't really cholera but a germ disease for which there is no cure, also spread by the Americans." He continues to recite local fears, grievances, and problems, ascribing them all to some action by the Americans or officials in Saigon. He recounts atrocities committed in nearby areas. As a closer, he tells the villagers that the only way they can fight this injustice, the only way they can survive, in fact, is to join with the NLF and work for a General Uprising, after which there will be peace, economic abundance, and freedom for all.

The general meeting breaks up and the submeetings begin. The farmers gather to be addressed by the team's Farmers' Liberation Association representative, women by the Women's Liberation Association representative, and the youth by the Youth Liberation Association representative. In these meetings appeals are further refined and pin

pointed, and a theme employed in one group is often inconsistent with one employed in another. For example, farmers are told that all the NLF asks from them is a small financial donation; the women are told the NLF army will protect their village and provide complete security; the youths may be urged to enlist in the NLF army and may be told that they must be prepared to sacrifice even their lives for the Revolution.

The villagers then reassemble in a large meeting that becomes participational. Questions are solicited, including those critical of the NLF. The team chief, a master at handling the barbed comment or loaded question, handles these with ease. Some questions may be fed him by covert Party members living in the village.

In the midst of this question period the team chief, in a demonstration of omniscience, casually remarks that he knows there are enemy agents in the group. He points to Mr. Ba and says "I know he is an enemy agent and will report to the village chief tomorrow about this meeting." The villagers know this is true. But the team chief takes no action against Mr. Ba and simply goes on with the meeting.

Then comes the pièce de résistance, a dramatic skit presented by the team. It is a highly entertaining little drama set in Saigon, involving a taxi driver played by the team chief, a Vietnamese girl played by the woman team member, and an American played by another team member. The American accosts the young girl and makes an indecent proposal that is overheard by the taxi driver, who comes to her rescue. There is a lengthy dialogue between the taxi driver and the American-full of double entendres and ribald remarks at the expense of the American, which delights the villagers. The drama becomes a verbal contest between the Vietnamese and the American, and the American is thoroughly confused, deflated, shattered, and defeated. The taxi driver and the girl go off together.

Then the team departs, scattering leaflets in its wake or pasting them to trees and walls, and it hoists and NLF flag.

THE AGIT-PROP CADRE

Agit-prop activity rested on the fundamental NLF assumption that the personal intermediary was the most potent form of communication. On the agit-prop, he was constantly told, rested the burden of the Revolution. A steady flow of messages from higher headquarters constantly reminded him of the complexity of his task and the high degree of skill that he must employ daily, for the NLF knew what all professional communicators know: that the simple communication of facts is often ineffectual in changing men's opinions, majority opinion reinforced by social pressure counts for much more than expert opinion or leadership assertions, and people tend to misinterpret what they hear or read to suit their own preconceptions. And the NLF knew that, working within such complexities, technique counted for all.

Next to technique, the personality of the individual agit-prop cadre was

of chief importance. The ideal cadre was a model of dedication, sobriety, skillfulness. Agit-prop cadres were chosen, a directive noted, "from among those who have a clean past, who are virtuous in behavior, and who known how to arouse the masses".5

The previously cited Central Committee directive listed the duties of the agit-prop cadres in a general way:

To direct the masses toward political struggle, armed struggle, or action among troops [by] directing the thinking of the masses toward the Revolution; to arouse hatred for the enemy in the masses and at the same time to enlighten them about their interests; to consolidate their faith and generate revolutionary enthusiasm.

The cadre directive listed his duties specifically as to:

(1) promote hatred of the enemy; (2) show the people it is in their interest to support the Revolution, for it serves them; (3) teach the people the meaning and techniques of the political struggle ...; (4) develop the people's faith and selfconfidence in achieving revolutionary successes and maintain their enthusiasm. As GVN battlefield interdiction began to take a heavy toll among agit-prop cadres and as the NLF grew in size, increased numbers of cadres were required, and infiltration by Northern-trained agit-prop cadres increased. Several of those who were captured gave interrogators a word picture of the training they had received in the North. It consisted of two parts: a session in political indoctrination and one in agit-prop techniques. The first, usually lasting two weeks, involved indoctrination in these major subjects: the world-wide advance of communism; socioeconomic progress being made in the DRV; the role of youth, a chief target in the task of building socialism and of liberating the South; the sociopolitical situation in the South; and the NLF and its successes. At the end of this period the inept were weeded out and final selection of infiltrators made. The remaining group then received about ten days of further training in the specific techniques of agit-prop work.

The outer limits of accomplishment of the agit-prop cadres, in objective terms, appeared to be these: At best they hoped to shape villager opinion to such a degree that the villager would support the cause of his own volition; the least they tried to do, when greater achievement was not possible, was to confuse the opinions and emotions of the villager so that he became indecisive and thus ineffectual in providing support to the GVN. Within this range the agit-prop cadres sought to instigate strife along class lines. They dealt in misinformation, exaggeration, and distortion. They concealed or misstated Communist intentions. They drew attention to and inflated :eal or trumped-up village grievances.

Wooly-mindedness and lack of specificity were the major short-comings of the cadres, who were instructed to allow their work to grow naturally out of the exigencies of the moment. Cadres were instructed to

study and understand both technique and policy. . . . Good technique does not consist of collecting materials about our policies and programs and then giving a "certified copy" to the masses. Neither does it mean picking up a megaphone and explaining general policies in a general way. It means ceaseless effort and taking detailed care to persuade the masses, to clarify their thinking.... Many cadres simply distribute slogans, and the result is that the masses know the slogans but do not know what actions to take.