Frequencies of Deceit How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Margaret Peacock is Professor of History at the University of Alabama. She is author of Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War and coauthor of A Deeper Sickness: Journal of America in the Pandemic Year.“Exceptionally well written, impressively informative, and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation. A substantial and original work of meticulous and detailed scholarship.”
Midwest Book Review
<p>“This is not just a book about the Middle East. It is a deep investigation into how truths are created, distributed, and erased. Margaret Peacock compels the reader to reconsider the sources of their information, to look beyond what was said and into how — and why — it was transmitted, or how much of what we think we know is fact and how much is just signal?”</p>
Pianeta Libri news
<p>“This book will undoubtedly appeal to students and researchers of Middle Eastern history and the history of radio.”<br /> </p>
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
For the rest of his life, populations in the Middle East vilified Said for his duplicity. However, the truth was that, by 1967, all the world's major broadcasters to the Middle East were dissimulating on the air. For two decades, British, Soviet, American, and Egyptian radio voices created an audio world characterized by deceit and betrayal. In this important and timely book, Margaret Peacock traces the history of deception and propaganda in Middle Eastern international radio. Peacock makes the compelling argument that this betrayal contributed to the loss of faith in Western and secular state-led political solutions for many in the Arab world, laying the groundwork for the rise of political Islam.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 • The Rise of a “Radioyazik”: British and Soviet Radio in the Postwar Middle East
2 • The Resonance Machine Is Born: The Fight for Palestine, the Battle for Israel
3 • “Imagine, O Arabs!”: Voice of the Arabs and the Rise of Egyptian Radio
4 • The Power of Peace: Radio Moscow and the Shaping of the Audio Landscape
5 • The Echo Chamber: The Americans Enter the Fight
6 • Britain’s Struggle for Air: The Sounds of a Dwindling Empire
7 • The Eleventh Hour: The Audiosphere Prepares for War
8 • Cacophany: The Crisis of Suez
9 • Voices Carry: Language and the Crisis of Truth
10 • Poisonous Propaganda or Productive Progress to Peace: 1967 and the Collapse of the Audiosphere
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
"Margaret Peacock nimbly shows how Arabic-language radio stations worked in a kind of competitive dialogue in an effort to secure international Arab citizens' loyalty during the Cold War. But the rhetorical world they created became brittle and increasingly disconnected from people's lived experience, finally shattering after the broadcasts falsely claimed victory during the disastrous defeat of the 1967 war."—Andrea L. Stanton, author of This Is Jerusalem Calling: State Radio in Mandate Palestine
"Fascinating, important, and timely. Peacock has produced a superb history of the psychological warfare and radio battles that defined—and distorted—the modern Middle East."—James Vaughan, Lecturer in International History, Aberystwyth University
"In this dazzling book, Peacock deftly charts the Cold War of international radio propaganda for the hearts and minds of people living in Middle East. She weaves evidence from US, Soviet, British, and Arab sources to map the interplay of lies, selective truths, exaggerations, and wishful thinking that eddied around Arab listeners. Her remarkable study serves as a lesson for our own media-buffeted era, pointing to the price of broken illusions: a stage set for a new generation of extreme propaganda, in this case religious. This is a worthy successor to her excellent study of children in Soviet and American Cold War propaganda and establishes Peacock as a major figure in the field of propaganda history."—Nicholas J. Cull, author of The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989