[Peace-discuss] Regressives
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Oct 20 07:09:45 CDT 2010
A century ago, in the more free societies it was becoming more difficult to
control the population by force. Labor unions were being formed, along with
labor-based parliamentary parties; the franchise was extending; and popular
movements were resisting arbitrary authority, not for the first time to be sure,
but with a wider base and greater success. In the most free societies, England
and the US, dominant sectors were coming to recognize that to maintain their
control they would have to shift from force to other means, primarily control of
attitudes and opinion. Prominent intellectuals called for the development of
effective propaganda to impose on the vulgar masses “necessary illusions” and
“emotionally potent oversimplifications.” It would be necessary, they urged, to
devise means of “manufacture of consent” to ensure that the “ignorant and
meddlesome outsiders,” the general population, be kept “in their place,” as
“spectators,” not “participants in action,” so that the small privileged group
of “responsible men” would be able to form policy undisturbed by the “rage and
trampling of the bewildered herd.” I am quoting from the most respected
progressive public intellectuals in the US in the 20th century, Walter Lippmann
and Reinhold Niebuhr, both Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberals, the latter
president Obama’s favorite philosopher.
At the same time the huge public relations industry began to develop, devoted to
the same ends. In the words of its leaders, also from the liberal end of the
spectrum, the industry must direct the general population to the “superficial
things of life, like fashionable consumption” so that the “intelligent minority”
will be free to determine the proper course of policy.
These concerns are persistent. The democratic uprising of the 1960s was
frightening to elite opinion. Intellectuals from Europe, the US, and Japan
called for an end to the “excess of democracy.” The population must be returned
to apathy and passivity, and in particular sterner measures must be imposed by
the institutions responsible for “the indoctrination of the young”: the schools,
universities, churches. I am quoting from the liberal internationalist end of
the spectrum, those who staffed the Carter administration in the United States
and their counterparts elsewhere in the industrial democracies. The right called
for far harsher measures. Major efforts were soon undertaken to reduce the
threat of democracy, with a certain degree of success. We are now living in that
era.
--from <http://www.zcommunications.org/quo-vadis-by-noam-chomsky>
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