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Originally Posted by RAGNAR
Thanks for the diversion, CapeCodPhyllis.
Ragnar
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Dear Ragnar:
Let me quote a few sentences from a book published in 1928 titled
Propaganda, by Edward Bernays:
- 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.
- We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
- Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons.... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world....
- Sometimes the effect on the public is created by a professional propagandist, sometimes by an amateur deputed for the job. The important thing is that it is universal and continuous; and in its sum total is regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers....
- No serious sociologist believes any longer that the voice of the people expresses any divine or especially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion....
I should mention that Bernays' book is not profound or especially valuable in itself. It merely states a few self-evident facts about the way in which a modern society works. For the person interested in propaganda, far more useful books are available. The reason I chose Bernays' book to quote is that it provides a more concise and clear summary, in a few quotable paragraphs, of the role of propaganda in modern life than most other books on the subject.
All it does is state the obvious: namely, that the whole concept of democracy is meaningless in an age where a few people have in their hands the mechanism for controlling the attitudes and opinions of a majority of the electorate. And Bernays also takes the disingenuous position that not only is this control a fact of life, but that it is a good thing; it is necessary to control and to regiment the thinking of the public in order to avoid chaos, and it can only lead us to greater progress and prosperity. He simply glosses over the question of who should exercise this control and what their motives should be.
If you really want to study the subject of propaganda, a good place to start is with the 1962 book, also titled
Propaganda, by the Frenchman Jacques Ellul. That book is still in print. Professor Ellul deals with the subject in much greater depth and with much greater honesty than Bernays does, but he agrees with Bernays on the most obvious and fundamental conclusions: on the irrelevance of the idea of democracy, for example. I quote from Professor Ellul's book:
If I am in favor of democracy, I can only regret that propaganda renders the true exercise of it almost impossible. But I think that it would be even worse to entertain any illusions about a coexistence of true democracy and propaganda.
To me, it is frustrating that a conclusion that seems so obvious is nevertheless resisted by so many otherwise intelligent people. Democracy has become almost a sacred concept to them, this idea that the policies guiding our nation should be decided by counting the votes of every featherless biped who has reached the age of 18. It's like motherhood: they're almost afraid to question it.
This seems to be as true of the intellectual in our society as it is of Joe Sixpack. The fact is that intellectuals are no more likely to be independent-minded than people who work with their hands; intellectuals, just like Joe Sixpack, are sheep. In fact, as Ellul points out, it is precisely the intellectuals who are most strongly controlled by propaganda, because they are more open to every medium of propaganda.
Well, it should not be surprising to us that although books such as Professor Ellul's
Propaganda -- and many others -- are readily available, almost no one has heard of them. Keeping the public believing in the myth of democracy is an important element in maintaining control over the thinking and behavior of the public. It is simply immoral and scandalous to question the reality of democracy. It's like questioning the Holocaust. And for that reason we're not likely to be taught in our social studies classes in school or to read in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal even the most obvious and self-evident conclusions presented by Bernays or Ellul. We're still taught how democracy safeguards our freedom, even while those who control the mechanism of propaganda in our democratic society are, in my opinion, working day and night to eliminate that freedom.
I find all of this very interesting, but also a little depressing. I cannot help but agree with Bernays and Ellul that the governing role of propaganda is inevitable in a modern, centralized, technological society. Without propaganda as a coordinator for the sheeple, we would have chaos. The important thing is not to try to avoid propaganda -- we really can't do that -- but to ensure that the people who control the content and the direction of the propaganda are patriotic people and that they have the right motivations. That is the essential thing. Beside this, everything else becomes insignificant.
The frightening conclusion is that there is no peaceful way out of this situation. The Liberal/Neoconservative/Zionist/Rapture Bunny coalition never will voluntarily relinquish control of the mechanism of propaganda, and as long as they retain control America will continue down the slippery slope toward oblivion: our borders will remain open; workers imported; jobs exported. The trade deficit with China will grow to a trillion dollars, while the Communists and their media allies laugh up their sleeves.
We cannot vote our way out of our predictable demise. Either we will let ourselves be led into extinction by the masters of propaganda like lambs to the slaughter, or we will fight back, and when we fight back there will be a period of bloody chaos. When I have said this in the past, I have been accused by people who otherwise agreed with me of having bloody-minded fantasies. They did not want to face the prospect of violence and bloodshed, and, when I said that we must face it, they accused me of wanting it.
Well, I don't want it -- except as an alternative that is infinitely preferable to national extinction. I prefer a peaceful path to survival and to freedom and to progress, but I no longer believe that a peaceful path remains for us. The people who accused me of being bloody minded were people who were comfortable, who were living fairly high on the hog, and of course they didn't want their comfort to end. They didn't want their comfortable world to become chaotic and dangerous and bloody. I can't blame them for that. But they let their desire for a continuation of comfort hide the truth from them. They wanted to believe that we can vote our way out of the mess that we're in and that everything can be resolved peacefully, and so that's what they believed. I can only agree with Professor Ellul that the worst thing that we can do now is entertain any illusions about the efficacy of democracy in combating the destructive propaganda mechanism being used against us.
Thanks for your previous reply.
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