Propaganda Model: Pinochet's Rule Over Chile

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During Pinochet's rule over Chile many people lived in fear, and that fear kept the dictator in power. Pinochet used many of Chomsky's levers of the propaganda model to keep that power for over a decade, but in using those levers is ultimately made Pinochet lose the final election. When the NO campaign came about, attempted to vote Pinochet out of power, the government used Chomsky's model of propaganda to try to put an end to it, under the guise of a free election. The main overarching level they used was comparing them to the communism, and attempting to control its people over fear of being taken over by communism, rather than have the people fear Pinochet's rule. They also gave flak to the NO campaign adds, by attacking the add directly…show more content…
When the NO campaign adds came out, Pinochet's men were able to review the tapes before they came out, and were able to create advertising that would attack the no campaign. He would mock their advertisements and create the notion that the NO campaign runners were secretly terrorists trying to destroy Chile and is people. this could be confused with the anti-communism lever, but it falls more so under the lever of flak, because Pinochet is trying to make the people question the NO campaigns legitimacy, a thought that wasn't to hard to spark up, seeing as many people didn't see the point in voting no, or was weary of rigged elections. These negative connotations were an attempt for people to distrust the no campaign, but it ended up…show more content…
When His advertising campaign strategy switched to attacking the No campaign, that was the point of no return. Even though Pinochet's adds were attacking the no campaign in a negative light, the negativity was turn around against him. people associated the negative adds were coming from Pinochet's campaign, so the people connected the man with the emotion, rather than connecting the advertisements message to the No campaign. On the Other side, we have the No campaign that was always full of silly, weird, happy advertising, which people came to associate that emotion to that campaign. It became clear that targeted advertisement to the enemies campaign would not work, regardless of the negative message was meant for your opponent. Though Pinochet's campaign failed in keeping the dictator in power, it was one of the few times where using the levers didn't work out, but there are plenty of examples where it has worked successfully, especially with the US government. It was a valid strategy, and at the time, it would be hard to see the government going with any other option. In fact, many countries politicians still use attack ads similar to Pinochet's ads in attempt to win over votes in their country, with the US being no

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