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Specificity of theme directed toward specific social elements was also stressed:

Among poor peasants it is necessary to stress the class-conflict viewpoint Among middle-class peasants, stress our agrarian policies, that peasants will be owners of land and rice fields. . . . Among religious groups, show how the Revolution will bring them concrete benefits in the form of religious freedom, and at the same time create class consciousness and strengthen the revolutionary struggle... Among the intermediate classes, those between the worker-peasant class and the petite bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie, according to individual and group understanding about the NLF and the Party, conduct clever agitation to widen the Front and Party influence; for instance, stress and emphasize the just and correct policies of the Front and the Party. . . . Among the masses, popularize the Front and Party plans and programs, the successes scored in socialist and Communist countries.... When the enemy talks about famine in North Vietnam do not deny there is famine but talk about the unending increases in food production in the North. The enemy will say the Communists are bloodthirsty dictators. We should point to their crimes. . . . Maintain the upper hand in counterpropaganda. Meet the enemy's anticommunism charges by promoting class consciousness through the dan van movement.

An agit-prop cadre could operate in a team or alone. In the latter case he was told to

take every opportunity for agitation. . . . On a busy train, in a bar, at a private party, make the subject lively and raise the level of the class consciousness of the individuals present according to the circumstances.... But be careful not to reveal yourself and avoid talking too much.... Here is a good example: Take a newspaper that carries a story about a certain man named A who committed suicide because he was unable to find a job. Bring up the subject of the newspaper story and then lead the conversation to the general subject of jobs, unemployment, the difficulties of earning a living, etc. In this way people are invited to complain about the hardships they face. From this seek an opportunity to incriminate American aid as a source of this state of unemployment and starvation.

Also commonly employed in the earlier days was the "root-and link" device. A Party member looked for a prospective "root" whom he would meet, talk with, and win over, after which he would educate him. This root then became a "link" who looked for other roots, and thus a "chain" was formed. This did not necessarily involve Party membership or any form of formal organization. It was a transmission belt for propaganda, highly directed, specifically oriented, and very personal. The root-andlink device was an effort to make use of traditional channels of communication. NLF output referred to it and similar devices as word-of-mouth propaganda, which it described as:

the principal medium of both covert and overt propaganda. It is direct. It enables us to present our views clearly and to understand immediately the response of the individual. We can by this means offer on the spot a solution to his problems and at the same time mobilize thinking. . . .

Agit-prop teams also employed a vast number of psychological tricks, of which the following is an example. After the important NLF victory at Ap Bac in 1963, guerrilla units moving away from the battlefield passed through villages carrying, on a stretcher-like affair, a bulky item covered by a huge blue cloth. The band would stop for water in a village and the four bearers of the cloth-covered apparatus would set it down without comment. Villagers would gather around and exhibit curiosity about what was under the cloth. The guerrilla leader warned them not to get

near it. Then, as their curiosity reached the bursting point, the leader would say: "Under this blue cloth is new secret weapon. By means of it we shot down dozens and dozens of the enemy's helicopters at Ap Bac." The band would then finish its marching break, the four bearers would pick up the device, still covered by the blue cloth, and depart. Other techniques employed by agit-props included those that piqued the Vietnamese sense of humor:

It is possible to use riddles during such events [the incident that the agit-prop cadre is captitalizing on], such as this one we used in the [1960] presidential elections: "The head is fascist. The rear is colonialist. The hands and feet are feudalist. The mouth is republican. What is it? (Answer: Diem)." Once these have been devised it is necessary to spread them to the towns and cities. . . . Ask [loaded] questions of the administration authorities or of soldiers and officers. One can pretend to be an ignorant farmer and ask an army officer in the market place: "What exactly have the people of Binh Ninh done to cause the killing of so many of them?" This technique can also be used in the binh van movement.

The individual behavior of the agit-prop cadres received close supervisory attention by the leadership, for the cadre was the NLF representative most often seen by the villagers, and their opinion of him to a great degree determined their attitude toward the more abstract aspects of the NLF.

** * * *

NOTES

1. See the author's monograph Viet Cong Communication Techniques (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, 1966; No. C/ 66-11), which treats in some detail the methods employed by the NLF in communicating its ideas. For a much shorter version of this monograph see the author's Vietnam: Communication Factors of Revolutionary Guerrilla War (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, 1965; No. C/65-16).

2. Originally the standard term for agit-prop in Vietnamese was tuyen huan, a contraction of tuyen truyen, meaning propaganda, and huan luyen, literally, training, but more precisely agitation in the Communist sense. Beginning in mid-1962 the NLF started using the term tuyen van giao, usually abbreviated as TVG, a contraction of tuyen truyen (propaganda), van nghe (meaning culture or letters and arts or literature and the fine arts, similar to the French beaux arts et belles lettres or la literature et les beaux arts, but with a Confucian literary overtone), and giao duc (meaning education or, in the Marxist sense, indoctrination). After mid-1962 the NLF generally employed the TVG term, and the GVN continued to refer to these activities as tuyen huan, or agit-prop; at the same time the NLF continued to use the term chinh tri (political) tuyen truyen or, roughly, political propaganda. The significant difference is that TVG referred to communication activities within the NLF system, the liberated area, and among the masses, and chinh tri tuyen truyen connoted activities directed against the GVN. In order to maintain this distinction, the only important one to the reader, and to simplify reference as much as possible, the term agit-prop is used here to mean cadre TVG activities and the word propaganda by itself to mean those mass activities that are part of the struggle movement and designed to influence the enemy. Since at the lower echelons virtually all communication activity was in the hands of a single individual, the agit-prop (or TVG) cadre, this oversimplification of usage cannot be regarded as particularly serious. What must be borne in mind, however, is the distinction between the agit-prop (or TVG) work by the cadres seeking to motivate the masses and the propaganda work by the masses themselves as part of their struggle movement.

3. In Vietnamese, chuan bi nhan tam, literally, "preparing man's heart": to prepare the people for the coming drive, that is, to shape public opinion or win people's support.

A cadre directive noted that "the purpose [of agit-prop work] is to mobilize the people's thinking. This is an ideological struggle that is complex and hard to carry out. It requires

time and painstaking efforts. A cadre should be patient, should follow up on each individual, and should repeat the same theme over and over. He should endeavor ceaselessly. He should build durable support and should not become discouraged. He should set an example for the masses, for unless we do how can we expect the masses to follow us?. . . . He should behave modestly, listen to the people talk. . . . He should be humble. . . .”

5. The best cadres, it added, are those who "ceaselessly study [Party] directives and policies, consolidate their thinking, and improve their virtuous revolutionary behavior. At the same time they remain humble and listen to the judgment of the masses. . . . Cadres not only must know programs and policies but also must feel hatred when they witness killings and oppression of the masses. They must know the secret thoughts and interests of the masses, must share their joys and sadness, must be determined to work for the good of the masses, and must make every effort to influence the masses. They must suffer the hardships of the masses, for only in this way can they feel the suffering and sorrows of the masses. If cadres lack feeling, their propaganda will be emotionless and will not arouse the masses. Above all, . . . cadres must accept responsibility for the words they speak."

BIBLIOGRAPHY, CHAPTER X

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Barghoorn, Frederick C. Soviet Foreign Propaganda. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Beloff, Max. "The Projection of Britain Abroad," International Affairs (London), XLI, no. 3 (July 1965), pp. 478–489.

Benda, Harry J. "Reflections on Asian Communism," Yale Review, October 1966, pp. 1-2. Bennett, J. "The German Currency Reform,” Annals of the Academy of Political Science, 267 (January 1950), pp. 43–54.

Borkenau, F. European Communism. New York: Harper, 1953.

Bottomore, Thomas B. Elites and Society. New York: Basic Books, 1964.

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Condit, D. M., Bert H. Cooper, et al. Challenge and Response in Internal Conflict, Volume III, The Experience in Africa and Latin America. Washington, D.C.: The American University, Center for Research in Social Systems, April 1968.

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international legitimacy of an existing administration, or to create the appearance of a viable opposition movement.

The means that the insurgents utilize to communicate with the population of the area in which they operate, or to which they aspire, depend upon the circumstances of the specific insurgency. In general, however, groups that are illegal can rely very little upon the mass media such as the newspapers. Instead, rebel groups tend to look to informal channels of communication and social movements for their primary channels in most

cases.

The four articles that follow illustrate and discuss the appeals and methods of various revolutionary groups. The content should not be considered to have official Department of Defense approval, express or implied.

Insurgent Appeals

OLAS: GENERAL DECLARATION*

Supranational or international revolutionary organizations must rely on ideological and highly political statements of doctrine.

This Conference [of the Latin American Solidarity Organization], after a deep and exhaustive analysis of the conditions existing on the continent and after having ideologically clarified the essential problems of the revolutionary movements, has arrived at the following conclusions:

Latin America exists in conditions of convulsion, characterized by the presence of a weak bourgeoisie which, in indissoluble union with the landholders, constitutes the controlling oligarchy of our countries. Increased submission and almost absolute dependence of this oligarchy on imperialism has caused the intense polarization of forces on the continent consisting of the oligarchic imperialist alliance on one side and the peoples on the other. The peoples have a tremendous revolutionary power which is only waiting to be channeled by a correct leadership, by a revolutionary vanguard, in order to develop or to initiate the fight.

That power is the power of the proletarian masses, of city and rural workers, of a poor and highly exploited peasantry, of the young intellectuals, of students with a great tradition of struggle, and of the middle strata, all joined together by the common denominator of the exploitation to which they are subjected.

In the face of the crisis of the whole structure of the economic, social and political system throughout the continent, and the growing rebelliousness of the peoples, imperialism has designed and developed a continental strategy of repression which proposes vainly to detain the course of history. The survival of the colonial and neo-colonial systems of exploitation and domination are the aims of U.S. imperialism.

*The General Declaration of the Latin American Solidarity Organization Conference, Havana, July-August 1967.

This situation determines and demands that revolutionary violence be unleashed and developed in response to reactionary violence.

Revolutionary violence as the highest expression of the peoples' struggle is not only the path, but it is the most concrete and the most direct potential for the defeat of imperialism.

The peoples as well as the revolutionaries have confirmed this reality and consequently realize the need to initiate, develop and bring armed struggle to its culmination in order to destroy the bureaucratic-military apparatus of the oligarchies and the power of imperialism.

In many countries the special conditions prevailing in the countryside, the favorable topography and a potentially revolutionary social base, in addition to the special adaptation of technical methods and professional armies to repress the people in the cities (which, moreover, are illadapted to an irregular war), mean that guerrilla warfare is the fundamental expression of armed struggle, the best school for revolutionaries and their indisputable vanguard.

The revolution, already underway in some countries, an imperative necessity in others and a future prospect in the rest, has a well defined anti-imperialist character within its anti-oligarchic aims.

The principal objective of the people's revolution on the continent is the seizure of power by means of the destruction of the bureaucratic-military apparatus of the state and its replacement by the people in arms in order to change the existing economic and social regime. This objective can be achieved only through armed struggle.

The development and the organization of the struggle depend on choosing the right site on which to carry it out and the most adequate methods of organization.

The lesson of the Cuban Revolution, the experiences accumulated by the revolutionary movement in recent years throughout the world, and the presence in Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala of an evergrowing armed revolutionary movement show that guerrilla warfare as a genuine expression of the people's armed struggle is the most effective method and the most adequate form for waging and developing revolutionary warfare in most of our countries and, consequently, on a continental scale.

In this particular situation the unity of the peoples, the identity of their aims, the unity of their views and their disposition to unite in carrying out the struggle are the elements characterizing the common strategy that must be opposed to that which imperialism is developing on a continental scale.

This strategy requires a precise and clear expression of solidarity, whose most effective characteristic is the revolutionary struggle itself, which extends across the continent and whose vanguard detachments are the guerrillas and liberation armies.

We, the representatives of the peoples of our America, conscious of the conditions which prevail on the continent, aware of the existence

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