America Manipulating International Opinion: How Many More Underhanded Moves Are Up Its Sleeves?

According to People’s Daily, the Overseas Edition, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s former editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in a recent interview with Russia Today that in order to reach certain countries’ aim to deliberately guide public opinion, many European reporters have been forced to publish articles on behalf of these nations’ intelligence agencies.

In Ulfkotte’s bestselling book, “Bought Journalism,” he disclosed further cases of how European reporters were bribed to publish misleading reports, and how he was ordered to “to lie and not tell the truth to the public.” During the interview, Ulfkotte said that many articles published under his name were in fact written by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, all with the intent of swaying international public opinion in favor of America. In return, he was invited to travel to the United States and was granted the title of honorary citizen.

If Snowden blew the whistle on the PRISM “datagate” scandal, which involved data collecting and monitoring, then Ulfkotte certainly exposed the “invisible hand” behind America’s manipulation of international public opinion.

America is economically and technologically powerful, which have served the basis for the formation of a media “empire,” allowed the country to extend its tentacles into every corner of the world, and created for itself a powerful voice on a global scale. This is not enough, for America developed detailed external propagation strategies and established a complex propagation system — the government cooperates with nongovernmental organizations, while public and private operations have integrated. The purpose is to shape international public opinion and serve the strategic interest of the United States.

This July, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the Pentagon spent millions studying how to influence social media. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was in charge of the research, claimed this study to be “critical to America’s national defense interests.”* In this era of big data, America’s grasp of network technologies and control of network systems has granted it use of these study results for prewar and postwar propaganda, so as to guide public opinion.

However, the key issue lies not in the U.S. government’s attempts to “guide” public opinion because every country’s government has a need for such guidance. The real problem is that to a large extent, America tries to mislead international opinion. A typical example would be launching the Iraq War in 2003 — the United States intentionally declared that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, thereby unfolding massive attacks on international public opinion.

Looking over America’s various tactics in regards to “guiding” international public opinion, it can be seen that America is displaying to the world that its foreign policies and operations are politically “correct,” morally “noble,” legally “justifiable” and “mainstream” in terms of public opinion. In order to achieve this purpose, America not only makes full use of various “strategies,” but also makes “underhanded” moves. Ulfkotte’s disclosures on America’s manipulation of public opinion are only the “tip of the iceberg.”

The Iraq war allowed the world to experience how the United States fabricated excuses to influence international public opinion; the PRISM “datagate” scandal allowed everyone to see how the United States monitored the entire world; now, Ulfkotte’s revelations have once again allowed people to come to understand how the United States manipulates international public opinion behind the scenes. America relies on its superior strength to “figure out” the world and “control” international public opinion, and new guises are constantly generated for this purpose. Nonetheless, America should remember that Lincoln once said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

*Editor’s note: Accurately translated, this quote could not be verified.