The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making
Where there is the possibility of democracy, there is the inevitability of elite insecurity. All through its history, democracy has been under a sustained attack by elite interests, political, economic, and cultural. There is a simple reason for this: democracy as in true democracy places power with people. In such circumstances, the few who hold power become threatened. With technological changes in modern history, with literacy and education, mass communication, organization and activism, elites have had to react to the changing nature of society locally and globally.
From the late 19th century on, the threats to elite interests from the possibility of true democracy mobilized institutions, ideologies, and individuals in support of power. What began was a massive social engineering project with one objective: control. Through educational institutions, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations and advertising agencies, corporations, banks, and states, powerful interests sought to reform and protect their power from the potential of popular democracy.
Yet for all the efforts, organization, indoctrination and reformation of power interests, the threat of democracy has remained a constant, seemingly embedded in the human consciousness, persistent and pervasive.
In his highly influential work, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind , French social psychologist Gustav Le Bon suggested that middle class politics were transforming into popular democracy, where the opinion of the masses was the most important opinion in society. He wrote: The destinies of nations are elaborated at present in the heart of the masses, and no longer in the councils of princes. This was, of course, a deplorable change for elites, suggesting that, [t]he divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings. Le Bon suggested, however, that the crowd was not rational, but rather was driven by emotion and passion.
http://www.alternet.org/media/propaganda-system-has-helped-create-permanent-overclass-over-century-making?akid=10328.260941.exGqdV&rd=1&src=newsletter825186&t=17
cprise
(8,445 posts)The Century Of The Self (BBC 2002)
"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."
RainDog
(28,784 posts)This is one of his best series, imo.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)(Walter) Lippmann was concerned primarily with the maintenance of the state-capitalist system in the face of increased unrest, resistance, and ideological opposition, feeling that the discipline of science would need to be applied to democracy, where social engineers and social scientists would provide the modern state with a foundation upon which a new stability might be realized. For this, Lippmann suggested the necessity of intelligence and information control in what he termed the manufacture of consent.
Important intellectuals of the era then became principally concerned with the issue of propaganda during peacetime, having witnessed its success in times of war. Propaganda, wrote Lippmann, has a legitimate and desirable part to play in our democratic system. A leading political scientist of the era, Harold Lasswell, noted: Propaganda is surely here to stay. In his 1925 book, The Phantom Public, Lippmann wrote that the public was a bewildered herd of ignorant and meddlesome outsiders who should be maintained as interested spectators of action, and distinct from the actors themselves, the powerful. Edward Bernays, the father of public relations and nephew of Sigmund Freud got his start with Wilsons CPI during World War I, and had since become a leading voice in the fields of propaganda and public relations. In his 1928 book, Propaganda, Bernays wrote: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. Modern society was dominated by a relatively small number of persons... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses, and this was, in Bernays thinking, a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Bernays referred to this borrowing from Walter Lippmann as the engineering of consent.
For the leading intellectuals and social engineers of the era, propaganda was presented as distinctly democratic and as a necessity to the proper functioning of society. John Marshall of the Rockefeller Foundation focused on what he called the problem of propaganda and sought to create, as he wrote in 1938, a genuinely democratic propaganda. Marshall pursued this objective through the Rockefeller Foundation, and specifically with the Princeton Radio Project in the late 1930s under the direction of Hadley Cantril and Frank Stanton, though including other intellectuals such as Paul Lazarsfeld and Harold Lasswell.
In 1936, Marshall wrote that the best way to expand the use of radio and film was for the Rockefeller Foundation to give a few younger men with talent for these mediums an opportunity for relatively free experimentation... men interested primarily in education, literature, criticism, or in disseminating the findings of the social or natural sciences.
just1voice
(1,362 posts)People in the U.S. have become so used to being propagandized that most people can't even tell what truth is anymore. Most people take some false, emotionally instigated position on every issue that has been presented to them as if the propaganda presented to them is somehow real.
Then, they simply repeat the false paradigms over and over, arguing the finest little details of complete falsehoods.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)Perhaps not all, but the vast majority of posters dig deep and overcome cognitive dissonance, when it would be much more comfortable and convenient to accept the propaganda that passes for reality in this best of all possible worlds.
just1voice
(1,362 posts)I applaud your efforts to inform people. I've tried about 100 times at this site, posting the definition of propaganda and sharing what I've read over the years, books such as "Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy". I get ignored, insulted, reported on and stalked.
We've got a serious overall societal problem that is reflected by many of the people here at DU whom are supposedly more open-minded. You nailed the problem with your post, it's propaganda. We're all exposed to it as it's so prevalent, in fact it's almost all there is now. The problem, regardless of how many times people are informed, is their choice to learn nothing and lazily accept propaganda as reality.
I think most people have to make the choice to learn about it, they will not listen to anyone as they've been successfully duped over and over. The propaganda works, it closes their minds and only they can open it.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)If they choose to recognize that it is, in fact, a key ... and if (and when) they decide to use it. But it is a process, and it can take many clues from many compatriots to build up enough internal discomfort to break through the resistance built up by a propaganda-created worldview. And each person processes contradictory ideas in their own way, so many will simply build stronger walls to avoid any possible breakthrough. It takes time and effort to move enough individuals to achieve critical mass. But it has happened in this forum over and over again.
RainDog
(28,784 posts)tho it's not the overall subject of the piece.
But, after reading this, I wished for the equivalent of the French Revolution answer of the problem of elitism in the U.S.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/01/lost-in-the-meritocracy/303672/