How Stephen Colbert's Poking Fun at Iranian Culture Helps America Lube the Wheels of War

In early July, news came that the Islamic Republic of Iran decided to issue fashion guidelines for men. Unveiling a large poster showing headshots of a half dozen men, in frontal and profile views, the Iranian culture ministry announced that certain haircuts were immodest and violated the Islamic Republic’s national and religious sensibilities. The ban covered gelled spikes and mullets, and the poster showed six acceptable styles, all seemingly ripped from the 1950s (the side part, the comb-back, and even a little flop over the ears are acceptable). Recovering from a beer-imbued long weekend, complete with fireworks, Americans returned to work on Tuesday to find a slew of articles and blog posts on the new restrictions. Even Stephen Colbert got in on the action, declaring that Iran had approved his own hairstyle. Everyone had a good chuckle. 

The reaction seems innocuous – just poking a little fun at what is, on its face, a ridiculous regulation on a whole nation of people thousands of miles away. But laughing at the expense of Iran is not quite as harmless as it seems – not when the U.S. has occupying armies on two sides of Iran’s borders, and a large chunk of the D.C. strategic establishment speaks belligerently about U.S. or Israeli bombing runs on the country of 65 million. There’s something crass about it, actually. The fact that Americans feel free to laugh about Iran in a climate where a former CIA chief tells CNN he thinks attacking Iran “may not be the worst of all possible outcomes” speaks to the likelihood that Americans administer their empire from their unconscious minds. Humor, of course, is a gentle way to convince people – propaganda for the unwitting part of the brain.

In the modern era, humor has worked again and again to dehumanize target countries as a standard part of war propaganda. In a democracy, where support of the population at large is supposedly a prerequisite for attacking another country, jokes are a common means of dehumanizing, demonizing and generally placing the population of the targets of the attack into the category of Other. Empathy plummets; and civilians in the aggressor state find it increasingly difficult to put themselves in the (Islam-approved) shoes of those on the receiving ends of the bombs.

Most troubling is that liberals and progressives – those you might expect, ostensibly, to oppose a U.S. attack on Iran – are just as likely to laugh the country to war as hawks. Maybe more: Hawks in the media, at neocon rags and mainstream outlets alike, take Iran far more seriously. Those liberals snickering about mullets play into the same sort of joking that occurred in the run-up to the Iraq War – dehumanizing the soon-to-be targets. But instead of the Butcher of Baghdad, today’s monsters are the “mad mullahs” in Tehran.

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Recently retired Prof. Hugh Rank, formerly of Governor’s State University, just south of Chicago, has done some of the best work around on "persuasion analysis," which dovetails nicely with studying war propaganda. What, after all, is war propaganda in a democratic society if not a means of persuading the civilian population to support a war and, if you’re lucky, enlist their sons and daughters in the effort? On his Web site on war propaganda, Rank defines war propaganda as “persuasion targeted at an internal audience,” with the emphasis in the original. (Demoralization of an enemy, to Rank, is “psychological warfare.”)

War propaganda breaks down into four categories (here’s Rank’s chart). You downplay things in the public discourse that make you look bad, and play up the good things you do. With regards to the propaganda’s targets, you ignore the other culture’s strong points, and play up its missteps. Intensifying the “bad” characteristics of others, says Rank, gets accomplished through “verbal aggression, words used to stir emotions” – think name-calling.