The Nation Branding Scam
"Soft power", "public diplomacy", "nation branding"....
At lot of time and money is spent on these things. Academics study them and teach them. Article and books are published. Universities and governments sponsor meetings and conventions. Huge amounts of money go into programs.
The fact is that "soft power", "public diplomacy" and "nation branding" do not really exist -- or at least do not exist as defined.There is no "power" in soft power. No "diplomacy" in public diplomacy and no "brand" in nation. It's all smoke and mirrors designed to fill the pockets of a few and ensure them status for wankers.
Cui bono?
Certainly not ordinary people. Certainly not businesses trying to sell stuff to other countries . The benefits go to PR and advertising companies and the universities who feed off tax dollars.
Most companies establish "brands" to distinguish themselves from other companies mostly selling the same things -- which is to say, they want YOUR money -- but you, as the consumer, have a choice - to buy their product or not. Should I buy Nike? Or... Given that there is not that much difference in products, the choice is emotional - kind of like choosing a boyfriend or girlfriend.
In the case of propaganda conducted by and for governments, the money paid to PR and advertising companies and the universities (which together form a kind of (Pseudo Knowledge Cabal) comes from local taxes.
Oh, no, say some ---Government programs such as Cool Japan help Japanese companies sell abroad. What's good for the country is good for you. This supposes that this "international" propaganda is effective -- despite its historically dismal record.
Of course, government propagands is is not "effective". About 90% NOT.
The first reason government programs such as Cool Japan fail is redundancy.
Local companies already do international marketing using foreign marketer who are very savvy about the cultures they try to sell in. BMW sells in America through BMW America. Toyota sells through Toyota America.
Even so, about 50% of their marketing is wasted because the public mind is fickle and corporate leadership often interferes in the marketing process trying to impose what you might call "corporate dogma" that ignores local culture, trends, and mentality.
Another reason, such government programs fail is when attempts at "nation branding" interfere with companies efforts to assimilate into a foreign culture by drawing attention to the fact that they are alien.
One cannot underestimate the power of fear of the "other", nativist rejectionism and prejudice, which we see currently with some Chinese products like smartphones.
Thanks to the reflexive nature of the public 'Mind', propaganda, as I have explained elsewhere, only really works inside the culture and society that generates it. So Russian propaganda works (a little) on Russians maybe but is not going to work at all on Americans and vice versa.
Astonishingly most of the people involved in "nation branding" and the like know little or nothing about persuasion, cultural memetics or attitude formation.
Not that it is that difficult. Persuasion works like hypnosis. Hypnosis only works with people who consent to it, and the process always begins with the hypnotist telling someone something that they can believe in, that seems true. Nor can a hypnotist make anyone do anything they don't really want to or contradicts their core values.
Every culture has core values expressed in a mythology, usually about origins but often tied to religion other belief systems.
In America, for example everything (for white people anyway) goes back to Puritan narratives of Good and Evil and the war between the Chosen and the Fallen. Black people have a different narrative, as do other ethnic groups. Still, the Puritan narrative is the majority view and presented mythologically by Hollywood and the TV industry.
Russia has a different story, much influenced by the reign of Stalin, WWII and the fall of the Soviet Union. China has its own story. And Japan, the ultimate village culture, has the national watakushi-shotsetsu, in which individuals are powerless.
The assumption that "we are the world" is why nation branding fails.
Americans may take their exceptionalism as "natural" -- the rest of the world, by definition "fallen" in one sense of another see it differently -- they don't buy into the tropes that Americans regard as simply true. They see the contradictions and discontinuities -- sometimes painfully in bodies in the streets.
Cool Japan wants the world to see the Japanese as peaceful, "cool", "cute" even -- a sort of Zen country. Try to tell that to the Chinese in Nanking. Genocide is not "kawaii".
As I said, nation branding is a 90 % FAIL.
But don't these efforts by Japan somehow mitigate the sins of the past?
They might -- but only if those sins were truly past -- but Japan's present politics-- it's refusal to apologize for war crimes in Asia, its aggressive posture in the Senkakus and Northern Islands -- and its partnership with American militarism -- make it look just dishonest. It's the 3 R's: regret, repentance, responsibility.
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| Chinese Memorial Ceremony For Victims of Nanking Massacre |
Sure, we may like cute Japanese girls and buy Japanese cars or cameras or whatever -- but that's not because we like the country or its culture. We like the girls because they are cute, young-looking and sexy -- and maybe submissive and feminine -- but not because they are Japanese. Those are our stereotypes, fetishistically engendered by our culture and society .
It is true that Japanese marketing is helped to some degree by reverse racism, particularly in the US. We fear our Chinese smartphone is "listening in", although I have nothing happens when I say, "Fuck Xi". We take our Sony for granted.
Back in the days of South Africa, the Japanese were "honorary whites". It's like that in Hollywood where the Japanese are "honorary Americans" thanks to huge investments in the entertainment industry.
While the Japanese are not stupid enough to try to influence content, one does not bite the hand that feeds you. How can one forget those "nice" Zero pilots yelling , "Please, please get out of the way" to the locals in Honolulu as they begin their strafing runs. The same guys who would in reality be later cutting off chunks of bicep from captured American pilots and eating Yankee sashimi in Guam.
When Hollywood is positive about a non-American culture, it tries to subtly assimilate it, emphasizing common American values. To question core values is the kiss of death. So geishas are nothing like they really were; nor are the yakuza or the samurai, who now number Tom Cruise among their own.
Note to China: Quick! Buy a major Hollywood studio.
Of course, the Japanese government does not spend money on Hollywood. They spend money advertising things like "omotenashi", usually translated as "hospitality" but derived from the ancient traditions of tea ceremony and zen, which most Japanese no longer know anything about.
Note to PR people: never use a foreign term that is longer than two or three syllables that nobody can understand or pronounce.
One can go on and on about what's wrong with the idiots who sell "soft power" or "nation branding programs. But the root causes lie in the educational system.
What's in a name? A lot. The term "political science" should tell you something.
"Science"? Really. And international "relations" (aka "political system relations") Who gets fucked? Notice the money on the table in the photo above.
Joseph Nye is often held up as good example of the Political Scientist par excellence. H was an intellectual "mandarin" from the American mandarin class who parlayed a Harvard PhD into government positions adding lip gloss to American propaganda and and adding an air of fake competence to the doings of the Deep State. Nye's biggest contribution was to substitute the term "soft power" for 'propaganda" -- which tied in neatly wtih the US's illusion of moral exceptionalism and existential supremacism (we're better than anyone else -- we're the chosen people). Hillary was a big fan.
All the social "sciences"suffer to some extent by institutional incest between academe and government --and the abuses of the mandarin class.There is nothing "scientific" about them. There is no skepticism -- only rationalizations of the beliefs of the mandarin class -- all the good "little Eichmanns".
Where once gentlemen were considered unqualified to participate in government without Greek and Latin, now they must have "political science" and "international relations". And maybe political economics. But they are still wankers.
Want to know more? Read:
\The Nonsense and Non-Science of Political Science- A Politically.pdf
https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
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