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Psyops: 'Psychological Operations' Any form of communication in support of
objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitiudes or behavior
of any group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.
Department of Defense, US Army Field Manual 33-I
There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind.
In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind - Napoleon Bonaparte
-Here in the United States, we're often brought up
and told we don't have propaganda
that we have a hard charging investigative press.
We have this educated, skeptical, even cynical citizenry
and that if there were powerful interests trying to manage or manipulate
public opinion, they would be exposed.
The reality actually is just the opposite.
Academics like Alex Carey and others
who've spent their lifetimes looking at how propaganda works
finds that it's actually in western democracies and open societies
where you need the most sophisticated sorts of propaganda.
And since World War I, thanks to people like Ivy Lee and Eddie Bernays
propaganda has become a business, this business of public relations.
Or as one of the firms that has often represented dictators
the Burson-Marsteller firm, puts it:
Their business is perception management
to manage public perception, public policy
on behalf of their clients, whoever they might be.
Metanoia Pictures Presents
In association with "I Am The Mob"
A Film by Scott Noble
-April 9th, 2003
Throngs of Iraqis spontaneously attack a statue of Saddam Hussein
the face obscured with Old Glory.
Later, the Stars & Stripes are replaced with red, white and black
symbolizing the transference of power from the liberators to the liberated.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld describes the scenes as "breathtaking".
To the British Army, they're "historic".
BBC Radio calls them "amazing".
And they were. Because the entire event was staged.
Years after the operation, a U.S. Army report
admitted that the toppling of the Saddam statue
had been engineered by a psychological operations group.
The document states: "Our TPT-- or Tactical Psyop Team--
saw the statue as a target of opportunity."
A week earlier, another psychological operation
laid the groundwork for what followed.
The script was for a female Rambo turned damsel-in-distress
to be rescued by U.S. Armed Forces.
-In the situation that we're talking about here, with Private Lynch
as you know, on about the 23rd of March
her 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed.
A number of the members of that maintenance company
were killed, a number were captured, and a number
were unaccounted for, she being one of them.
-They waited 24 hours to get the cameras there, to set up the whole thing
to make this big rescue, and the SWAT team goes in to save her
and then she becomes an instant celebrity overnight.
That story happened on the same day
that the tanks were rolling into Baghdad.
That's the same day that we shelled
the Palestine hotel where the independent journalists were.
The same day we blew up Al Jazeera's television station
and killed one of their journalists.
All we're getting on the front pages of the papers
and in the news is the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
So, that was a PR substitute story.
Toppling the Saddam statue, they got Chalabi's group.
The Rendon Group had actually formed them.
The CIA paid the Rendon Group to form the Iraqi Congress
as a counter-group to Saddam Hussein, and they were based here in the U.S.
Then they flew them over there and they shipped them into Iraq.
They were the ones that were standing around the statue
as a tank was used to pull it over.
The Rendon Group had been around--he worked for George W.'s father
and he worked for Clinton too.
His firm ... He used to be a public relations press guy for Carter
and he created a PR firm that specialized in war.
-The head of the Rendon Group, John Rendon
denies that he is a "national security strategist" or a "military tactician".
Rather, he states: "I am a politician
and a person who uses communication to meet public policy
or corporate policy objectives.
In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager."
Following the First Gulf War, Rendon was paid $23 million by the CIA
to create anti-Saddam propaganda.
Following 9/11, he was charged with public relations
for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon is far from alone.
Public relations has mushroomed into a $200 billion a year industry
with PR "flacks" in the United States now outnumbering journalists.
Propaganda has become the primary means by which
the wealthy communicate with the rest of society.
Whether selling a product, a political candidate, a law, or a war
seldom do the powerful deliver messages to the public
before consulting their colleagues in the public relations industry.
Colin Powell presents a now typical case. He didn't choose
a seasoned diplomat for the position of Under Secretary of State.
Instead, he chose Charlotte Beers
known in PR circles as "The Queen of Madison Avenue."
Her resumé includes successful advertising campaigns
for Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo
Uncle Ben's rice
and now, Uncle Sam.
-You see a news show. You watch 60 Minutes
or a Fox program, or whatever it is.
You tend to give more credibility
to what you're told is journalism.
If an advertisement comes on
hopefully you tend to be more skeptical of that
because obviously, somebody put an awful lot of money
into crafting this slick TV ad and airing it.
But what you probably never suspect
is that that news story you just watched was also crafted
by a company, given to the TV station or network
with the understanding that they would put their own logos on it
identify it as real journalism, and air it.
-Colonel Sam Gardiner would eventually chart 50 false news stories
created and leaked by the Bush White House propaganda apparatus
prior to and during the assault on Iraq.
Foremost amongst these were the lies that led to the war in the first place.
"It was not bad intelligence that led to the invasion", concludes Gardiner
"It was an orchestrated effort that began before the war"
and was "meticulously planned" to manipulate the public.
-In 2002, when the Bush administration was conducting
its massive public relations campaign to sell the war
out of Donald Rumsfeld's office in the Pentagon
there was something now referred to as the Pentagon pundits program
where literally scores of former high-ranking military
generals and admirals and colonels
were getting their talking points for their appearances on TV news shows
directly from the Pentagon. They would literally go to the Pentagon
be on phone conferences with the Pentagon, travel with the Pentagon
and then go on TV as supposedly independent sources.
Although most of them were actually being paid in the private sector
because these were retired military officials by defense contractors
and many of them were actually registered lobbyists for military contractors.
So there's a bit of a conflict of interest right away
when your bread and butter is based on
being able to sell armaments and bombs and missiles
and you're supposed to be just a patriotic ex-general
giving an honest opinion to what's going on.
And even though that's illegal, there's no way to really stop it.
And the most powerful medium through which it occurred
refuses to even report on the scandal.
You've got just a massive problem, and that's where we're at.
-There were clear warning signs long before the age of the "imbed."
During the assault on Serbia, under President Clinton
a report emerged about the Dutch journalist Abe De Vries
revealing the presence of "psywarriors" working at CNN.
They derived from the Third Psychological Operations Battalion
at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina.
De Vries quoted Major Thomas Collins of the U.S. Army Information Service:
"Psyops personnel, soldiers and officers
have been working in CNN's headquarters in Atlanta
through our program, training with industry.
They helped in the production of news."
What made the Iraq War different were not so much the tactics
or even the scale, but the high-tech synergy.
It was almost impossible to tell where the state ended
and the "Fourth Estate" began.
-One of the things that we don't want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq
because in a few days we're going to own that country.
-Should they have used more? Should they
use a 'MOAB,' the mother of all bombs?
A few daisy cutters?
And let's not just stop at a couple of cruise missiles.
-The invasion of Iraq represents a pinnacle
of domestic psywar in the United States.
An unparalleled integration between public relations firms
corporate media and military psyops.
At the time of the assault, large segments of the American public
were convinced that a nuclear attack by Saddam Hussein on their nation
was not only possible, but imminent.
Soldiers who comprised the invading force were similarly confused
with a remarkable 77% believing that Hussein
was responsible for the attacks of 9/11.
Many earnestly believed that the mission was to destroy a mysterious group
known as Al Qaeda, while bringing freedom to the Iraqi people.
-"Go home Yankee!" -"We're here for your f***ing freedom
so back up right now!"
-Yet, what was actually happening was what the Nuremberg Charter describes
as the single greatest crime under international law:
The "Planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of aggression."
Seven years later, the results of the invasion are clear.
According to "The Lancet," one of Britain's most respected medical journals,
approximately 600,000 Iraqis have been killed from the invasion as of 2006.
By 2009, a polling agency put the number at over 1 million.
Four million Iraqis have been made refugees in their own country.
Their entire society is shattered.
How did the land of the free and the home of the brave
arrive at a place where citizens could be manipulated
with such efficiency and on such a massive scale?
Our story begins in an unlikely place: a coal mine.
Psywar
I. Perception Management
When we think of public relations, this is not an image that springs to mind.
Yet it was here, at the turn of the century
in the town of Ludlow, Colorado
that PR as we know it began to take shape.
From the beginning, it was steeped in class warfare.
-The conditions that men, women and children
worked under in 19th century America
were very much like what we think of now as
the conditions in the 'global South'
in which 13-14 hour days were not uncommon.
Living conditions were often in barrack-like housing.
Children worked right alongside their parents.
Those were the kind of conditions and certainly, if you picture
what we see in the global South today, almost slave-like conditions.
You can make the comparison pretty easily.
-Like workers in most other industries at the time
the coal miners in the town of Ludlow were organizing to win basic rights.
In 1914, the United Mine Workers Union called for coal companies to grant
safe working conditions, tolerable wages
and compliance with state mining laws.
In response, a labor organizer at Ludlow was shot to death
by gunmen working for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation
owned by the Rockefeller family.
Then, as now, the Rockefellers were synonymous with wealth and power.
William Avery Rockefeller had made a living as a literal snake oil salesman
but his son, John Davidson had achieved the American Dream.
His fortune was built by exploiting oil reserves in Mexico and the United States.
John Davidson Rockefeller was America's first billionaire
but it was his son, John D. Jr.
who would define the Rockefeller legacy in the 20th century.
Twenty-four hours after striking workers and their families celebrated Easter
the end came. It became known as the Ludlow Massacre.
-The strike went on from the fall of 1913, to the spring of 1914
and they still couldn't break the strike. The strikers were living in tent colonies
set up by their union, the United Mine Workers, and in April of 1914
the National Guard, which was at this time being paid by the Rockefellers
the National Guard attacked the tent colony of men, women, children
killed many people, set the tents afire.
They found the next day the bodies of 11 children and two women
who were burned, suffocated to death in that fire.
That was called the Ludlow Massacre.
-A brief glance at events prior to Ludlow
reveals that the brutalization of workers in the United States
was not an unusual occurrence.
Sixty years earlier, in 1847, a nation-wide general strike
was met with violent oppression by federal troops.
Over 30 workers were killed, and 100 wounded
at "The Battle of the Viaduct" in Chicago.
In 1894, Federal troops killed 34 American railway union members
also in the Chicago area. The troops were attempting to break a strike
led by Eugene Debs against the Pullman Company.
In 1897, 19 unarmed coal miners were killed and 36 wounded
by a posse organized by a sheriff near Lattimer, Pennsylvania.
Most of the workers were shot in the back while attempting to flee.
The worldview of the great capitalists at the turn of the century
can be summed up in the words of William Vanderbilt.
In response to a suggestion that the New York Central Railroad
should adjust its train schedules to accommodate the public
he replied: "The public be damned!"
But the relationship between the public and corporations was changing.
Decades of organizing and rebellion had given rise
to a vast network of labor groups with increasing political power.
Over time, these included the Grange movement, the Socialist Party
the Greenbackers, the Populists and Progressives.
And perhaps most significantly, the anarchist union
known as the Industrial Workers of the World, or the "Wobblies."
Following the massacre at Ludlow, soldiers in Denver refused to participate
in further attacks against the miners, declaring that
they would not engage in the shooting of women and children.
Demonstrations erupted across the country.
A march occurred in front of the Rockefeller offices in New York City.
A clergyman protested outside a church where Rockefeller
liked to give sermons, only to be beaten by police.
In modern parlance, it was a PR nightmare.
-Ivy Lee went to work for, among other clients, the Rockefellers.
The Rockefeller family, after the Ludlow massacre
hired, used Ivy Lee
to manage the public perception around that event and other events.
Ivy Lee's specialty was crisis management.
Among other things, he is credited with inventing the press release
which all of us just sort of think of as something helpful.
You want to publicize an event? A church picnic? Call a news conference?
You put out a press release.
But at the time, the idea was very radical
because what Ivy Lee was saying is:
"Well, we're going to manage this crisis by calling attention to it.
We're going to actually assist and help
the news media and journalists in covering it."
What he knew was that the degree to which journalists became
used to and dependent on his services was the degree
to which he could actually cultivate and manage coverage.
-Lee began by waging a disinformation campaign.
He put out news bulletins claiming that the 2 women and 11 children at Ludlow
had not been killed by militia, but by an overturned stove.
He circulated stories suggesting that Mother Jones
in addition to being a labor organizer, was a madame who ran a bordello.
He ghostwrote letters to the Governor, and even to President Wilson.
Lee's techniques achieved little success
in part because he himself had become a highly visible figure.
In the future, PR experts would learn that their techniques
are rarely effective unless practiced in the dark.
Yet, one of Lee's innovations was epoch-making.
Upon learning that the Rockefeller Foundation
had $100 million set aside for promotional purposes
he convinced Rockefeller to donate large sums to colleges
hospitals, churches and charitable organizations
in order to generate positive publicity.
He also suggested that Rockefeller Sr. begin handing out money in public
and that Jr. appear in staged photo ops at work sites.
What Ivy Lee understood was that the corporation needed a makeover.
Widely perceived as greedy, tyrannical institutions
corporations needed to manufacture an image of warmth and caring.
-This was the beginning of the public relations industry.
Rockefeller didn't set up the Rockefeller Foundation
until Rockefeller became very unpopular because of his labor policies.
And suddenly, Rockefeller needed to create a good impression.
-Well, it's an interesting phenomenon that the poor actually give
a larger percentage of their income
than the rich.
I think the rich feel they're doing more because
giving a $100,000 seems like a substantial kind of donation
and it doesn't matter that they have a $100 million.
They still think, well, they've done quite a lot.
So, it's partly a result of this distortion of economic values
and it's partly the result of being cheap.
People don't want to give away their wealth
Ted Turner said, because they're afraid their status
in the Forbes 400 is going to go down that little bit.
So they give it away when it's prudent or when it's beneficial
when they can get some displayed benefit out of it
or when it can give them access to a different sort of social class
or a different group that they want to be a part of.
But, they have a more functional view of their wealth
rather than a strictly charitable view.
-Charity, and private charity, and you might say government charity
any kind of action
that relieves people's distress a little bit
without changing the system, maintains the system.
In fact that is the way that the American system
which is very exploitative and very unfair
that's the way the American system is being maintained
for all these centuries, really.
By giving people a little bit
and giving enough people just enough
to prevent them from breaking out in open rebellion.
-Today, one of the largest PR firms in the world
specializes in the art of crisis management.
Burson-Marsteller holds offices in 35 countries
and has served clients as varied as cigarette make Phillip Morris
chemical giant Union Carbide and the Monsanto Corporation
a company specializing in genetic engineering and other life sciences.
Like the Rendon Group, Burson-Marsteller is bipartisan to the core.
Its worldwide president and chief executive, Mark Penn
served as Hillary Clinton's key political adviser during the 2008 election.
The most disturbing facet of Burson-Marsteller
is its willingness to work with the world's worst human rights violators.
They ran PR for the Indonesian government
as it committed genocide in East Timor.
They worked closely with the Nigerian government and Royal Dutch Shell
during and after the Biafran War in Nigeria.
And they helped to improve the image of a U.S. backed
Argentine military junta, led by General Jorge Videla.
-One of their clients in the 1970's was the
brutal Argentine junta which had taken control of the government there
and was rounding up dissidents, systematically torturing, beating, killing
people and flying out over the ocean and dumping bodies.
Not a really good public image.
So, the Burson-Marsteller firm was used by Argentina
hired by Argentina and went to work for them quite happily
under a fat contract to improve the image of Argentina
in the international financial community and in the Western press.
-In some ways, it should not be surprising that public relations
has evolved into companies like Burson-Marsteller and the Rendon Group.
Looking back at the career of its first guru
we find a remarkably similar pattern.
-Ivy Lee went to work for the IG Farben company
a big German industrial company, and we know now that IG Farben
was actually part of the Nazi propaganda inner circle.
One of the most effective and, of course, horrifying
government propaganda campaigns ever organized
was the Nazi campaign that continued for years and years
under the direction of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
And IG Farben paid Ivy Lee and also paid Ivy Lee's son to represent
not just their interests, but the interests of Nazi Germany in an effort to
paint the Nazi regime as
being a friendly regime.
-But before lending his expertise to the Third Reich
Mr. Lee would do so for the American government.
Along with other experts in the burgeoning field of mind science and
public relations, he would engineer propaganda for World War I
not just against the enemy, the Germans
but against the American people themselves.
II. Propagating the Faith
-We often talk about the propaganda being relatively recent
but of course, it isn't.
Even in ancient societies that weren't democratic
especially large states, it was understood by elites that
if you don't have the support of the people, you could be in trouble.
And so, a fair bit of attention was actually given to
legitimizing military adventures.
I'm remembering here a passage from an old Chinese text
I think it's Han Fei Tzu, so it would be about 2300 years ago
where the author of the book says: "In general,"- and I'm quoting now-
'In general, war is a thing that the people despise.
Therefore, when a young man is to be sent off to war, his wife
his parents, his family, should gather around him and say to him
'Conquer, or let me never see you again'."
And this is a very powerful sense of--
Well, first of all, the violence done to that young man.
But also of the sense that
war is disgusting to most people
and it is often not in their best interest
and therefore, one needs all kinds of songs and dances
and in this case
threatening the young man, essentially, with dispossession.
You can't return to your family. You can't return home.
You'll be disgraced. Honor, security
everything has been played upon here. And it continues.
So yeah, national security is one of the most powerful notions
in modern times, to swindle, I think, people
to do things that are not in their best interest
and to support massive military complexes
that are not in anybody's interest
but that are like cancers feeding on society for a career.
-Propaganda and persuasion have been around for centuries.
But propaganda in its modern sense
can be traced to the 15th and 16th century
when the Catholic Church was in a tough competition with the Protestants
over how to articulate a religious vision for the world.
And the reason that I mention this is that it shows
that propaganda is about mindset.
It's about ideology. It's about worldview: how people see things
as distinct from an individual policy
or whether you happen to like this candidate or that candidate.
So, that's where the word came from:
for "propagating the faith".
And that's the way the word was used up until the early 20th century.
And then, what emerged, particularly with World War I
was the application of this 'propagating the faith'
to refer to international affairs
to refer to what a national government would do
a national security policy.
In the run-up to World War I, and during World War I
what one saw in the geopolitical stage was a crisis of empires.
Empires were disintegrating; they were falling apart.
The British Empire seemed extremely strong at that time
and yet nevertheless was in a downward phase.
It couldn't afford to support its own army, for example.
Same with the French. Same with the Austro-Hungarians.
Same with the Russians, the Tsarist Empire.
Same with Ottoman Turkish Empire, and so on around the world.
When that war was underway
most particularly the United Kingdom
came up with an office whose specific purpose
was promoting the war aims of the United Kingdom, the English
through publicity, through covert operations
through what would today be called dirty tricks, through telling the truth
through a whole number of different applications of information
using information as an instrument of war.
And from the get-go, from the very beginning
it was both aimed at the enemy
and aimed at the home population.
-The Creel Commission was the American variant of it.
Woodrow Wilson came into office in 1916
with the slogan 'Peace Without Victory'.
He said that what we want is an end to World War I.
Neither side deserves our support.
And the population didn't want to enter the war.
-In America, 1916 was an election year.
The war was the dominant issue.
The election campaigns of the parties crystallized the sway of opinion.
Neutralism, the profound wish to stay out of the war
still possessed a doughty champion in the President.
Support for Wilson's policy was strong
in the Middle-West and Pacific states.
Europe's war seemed more remote there than on the Atlantic seaboard.
At the Democratic Convention, Wilson was renominated
presidential candidate.
The chairman opened his speech with a text
from the Sermon on the Mount:
-"Blessed are the peace-makers:
for they shall be called the children of God."
-Within a couple of months, Wilson was talking about
'Victory Without Peace'
and he had to somehow drive the population into accepting
this sharp change in policy; the opposite of what they voted for
and that's where the Creel Commission came in.
-George Creel described his work with unabashed enthusiasm.
It was a plain publicity proposition. A vast enterprise in salesmanship.
The world's greatest adventure in advertising.
75,000 civil leaders, known as "Four Minute Men"
were assembled to deliver pro-war messages to people in churches
theaters and civic groups.
Periodicals were sent to 600,000 teachers.
Boy Scouts delivered copies of President Wilson's addresses
to households across America.
In was, in short, the largest wartime propaganda campaign
in the history of the United States.
Central to the committee's propaganda were two basic ideas:
1: the American homeland was in imminent danger
from a savage, bloodthirsty foe.
And 2: it was the fate of the American nation
in President Wilson's words
to "make the world safe for democracy".
The first thing was a time-honored tactic, long used in the United States
and other countries, to vilify foreign enemies
indigenous peoples, and slaves.
During the Great War, the savage Indian and the sub-human Negro
were transformed into the barbaric Hun.
The caricature of the bloodthirsty Hun was bolstered
by a series of fake news reports leaked by the new propaganda industry
and disseminated to the public.
Among them, that babies in Belgium had had their hands cut off
were being impaled on bayonets and, in one case, nailed to a door.
That a Canadian had been crucified by German soldiers
and that dead bodies were being boiled down in so-called
"corpse factories", to be used for ammunitions and pig food.
In a foreshadowing of the "Freedom Fries" incident
sauerkraut was renamed "Liberty cabbage".
False atrocity stories would become a staple for nations
in wartime throughout the 20th century.
A recent example occurred prior to the First Gulf War.
-While I was there I saw Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns.
They took the babies out of the incubators...
...took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor.
-As it turns out, the massacre of babes never occurred.
The young girl was actually a member of the Kuwaiti royal family
and had been coached by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton
to give persuasive false testimony.
-Kids in incubators, and they were thrown out of the incubators
so that Kuwait could be systematically dismantled.
-The attempt to engender hatred against Germans in support of the war effort
was highly successful. But there was another
equally important aspect to the domestic propaganda campaign.
If every adventure story needs a villain, it also needs a hero.
"You should use your influence to keep your peaceful people from
fighting the battles of a distant France or Belgium."
"It is God who calls my sons, to save humanity."
-Now this is a song I made about when they were drafting the men.
Uncle Sam says he travel East and he travel the West.
Uncle Sam says he believe he know the best.
♪ Uncle Sam says, uncle Sam says
Uncle Sam says you gotta bottle up and go.
I travel East and I travel the West...♪
-Creel estimated that 72 million copies of 30 different booklets
about American ideals were sent across the United States
with millions more sent abroad.
In addition to influencing the minds of Europeans
the goal was to redefine for the home population
the very concept of what it meant to be American.
The new American would not interpret events, from what Creel called
a class or sectional standpoint, but rather as a unified collective.
In this manner, the people could be herded into "One white hot mass instinct."
Previously, military action by the United States
had been justified under the pretense of maintaining order
protecting American interests, and bringing civilization to the savages.
Now, the word "civilization" would transmute into "democracy".
♪ Uncle Sam say you don't have to hesitate.
Uncle Sam says you gotta bottle up and go.
?? numbers call 192
-Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian communications theorist once said that:
'If a fish could talk, and you could ask a fish
"What's the most obvious element of your environment?"
the last thing that the fish would say would be "water".
That's the last thing the fish would notice and it's true about any culture.
Those things that are most powerful and most obvious to an outsider
don't get seen by the people swimming in that water.
"America is God's chosen people."
This goes back to as far as 1630 where John Winthrop on the Arabella,
coming from England to the United States, said "We're a city on a hill."
It's not an accident that in the campaign debates
and stumps of the recent candidates
you had Barack Obama actually saying that:
"we are a city on a hill", as well as Sarah Palin.
Ronald Reagan said it in his inaugural address.
I've spoken of a shining city all my political life
but I don't know if I ever quite communicated
what I saw when I said it.
But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city
built on rocks stronger than oceans
wind-swept, God-blessed
and teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace."
-We're a city on a hill, and so our mission is to democratize
the rest of the world. We've got the best system possible
and basically people ought to pay attention to us, 'cause we know.
-The idea of a particular state cast as savior of the world
would be taken to new heights in the United States
but it wasn't an American invention.
The "savior" motif was used as a justification
for virtually every imperial intervention during the Colonial Era.
French leaders spoke of a "civilizing mission" in their new colonies.
British leaders spoke of bringing progress and civilized government to India.
Imperial Japan spoke of unleashing an earthly paradise in Asia.
While the Third Reich dreamt of a worldwide utopia.
A decade before World War I, Mark Twain stated that:
"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country
not to its institutions or its office-holders."
Decades later, George Orwell came to a similar conclusion, that:
"Patriotism is a devotion to a certain place and people
contrary to nationalism, which is inseparable from lust for power."
This concept of patriotism remains elusive.
-Once the war against Saddam begins, we expect every American
to support our military, and if they can't do that, to shut up.
-Equating super-patriotism with militarism:
military endeavor, military achievements
military struggles and victories; that's all supposedly
a special manifestation of super-patriotism.
And I argue that a real patriot wants something different for his country.
He wants social justice. He wants peace and stability.
He wants fairness. He wants an end to racism and sexism.
He takes pride in his country's ability at social betterment
rather than his country's ability
to invade and knock around other countries.
A real patriot feels an attachment to his country
but not at the expense of other countries.
He or she may feel a special attachment
to the history of his own country.
He values the accomplishments of his country
like the abolition of slavery, the emergence of collective bargaining
and the rights of working people for a better life
the gains made by women
in terms of being able to get into public life.
These are the kind of things that the real patriot would value.
In October 2001, George W. Bush signed into law
what civil libertarians characterize
as an all-out assault against the Bill of Rights.
It was called the Patriot Act.
During the Great War, similar bills were passed.
The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act, passed a year later
authorized huge fines and lengthy prison terms for anyone
who obstructed the military draft, or encouraged what was termed
"disloyalty to the state".
The sweeping legislation was quickly put into effect.
And first on the list, were the "Wobblies".
Shall we have this-
Prosperity
-Or shall it be this-
Anarchy, Sedition, Lawlessness.
-In many ways, the Wobblies were the most impressive example
of a union movement in the history of the U.S. working class.
'Wobblies' was the nickname for an organization called
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
which flourished in the first decade and a half of the 20th century.
The American Federation of Labor, which was the main craft union at the time
refused to organize African-Americans, immigrants
and women workers.
So, that meant excluding the vast majority
of the working class from the union movement.
Along come the Wobblies, and they set out from the beginning
specifically to organize immigrants
women, African-Americans, alongside white workers
in what they called 'one big union'.
They led some of the most successful strikes.
One of their strikes was the first sit-down strike at the time.
Women workers played leadership roles
something that was absolutely unheard of at the time.
Their philosophy was a revolutionary philosophy.
It's known as anarcho-syndicalism.
-A federated, decentralized
system of free associations
incorporating economic as well as social institutions
would be what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism
and it seems to me that it is the appropriate form of social organization
for an advanced technological society in which human beings
do not have to be forced into positions of tools; of cogs in a machine.
-On September 5th, 1917, Federal agents
raided offices of the Wobblies across the nation
leading to arrests for the offense of causing insubordination
disloyalty, and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces.
101 of the defendants were found guilty
and received prison sentences up to 20 years.
-Wilson carried out a brutal internal repression called the Red Scare
which was the worst in American history; far worse than McCarthy
and far worse than anything that's going on now.
They arrested thousands of people and smashed the labor movement.
Heavy constraints on free expression, threw lots of people in jail
expelled all sorts of people from the country.
-Yet, what had started as a hunt against radicals
soon spread to every corner of American society.
Patriots were encouraged to inform on friends and neighbors
who spoke out against the war
while surveillance increased dramatically, not only by the military
but by seemingly benign institutions, like the Postal system.
-The state flourishes in time of war.
The state grows stronger in time of war.
The state accumulates power. The military is enhanced.
The forces of repression are enhanced.
War is an opportunity for the government to grow in power.
-By the time the war ended, the total number of deaths
had reached approximately 9.7 million soldiers
with millions more suffering life-changing injuries
and severe post-traumatic stress.
To what end was not clear. The massive bloodshed
had not made the world safe for freedom and democracy.
What it had done, was produce enormous fortunes
for a handful of corporations and banks
while leaving the worldwide labor movement in disarray.
If the Great War had been a test of the Constitution
and the concept of balancing the powers by each other, it failed.
The United States Supreme Court established in Schenck vs. United States
and Abrams vs. United States, that the Federal Government
could suspend constitutional rights when the nation faced:
"a clear and present danger".
Randolph Bourne, speaking of the Great War as a whole
responded preemptively with a now-famous dictum.
"War", he said, "is the health of the state."
III. We The People
-The definition of polyarchy that we have in the social sciences
is a system where the participation of masses of people is limited to
voting among one or another representatives
of the elite in periodic elections.
And in between elections, the masses are now expected to keep quiet
to go back to life as usual while the elite make the decisions and run the world
until they can choose between one or another elite another four years later.
So really, polyarchy is a system of elite rule
and a system of elite rule which is a little more soft-core
than the type of elite rule that we would see under
a military dictatorship, for instance.
But, what we see is that under a polyarchy
the basic socioeconomic system does not change;
it does not become democratized. Wealth is not redistributed downward.
You don't see a more equitable redistribution of wealth and resources.
So that's the key: socioeconomic dictatorship
and free elections; that's the prescription for polyarchy.
Participatory democracy would see not only more participation
of people in the running of their daily affairs, but it would see
a democratization of the economy; democratization of social relations.
-In the 20th century
you can't really talk openly about rule by the rich.
That doesn't sound nice. The devices that have been developed
propaganda devices, are ruled by the more competent:
the technocratic elite, the responsible people, the educated sectors.
There's a huge literature on this, but maybe the primary source
for the 20th century is the leading public intellectual
of the 20th century, in the United States, Walter Lippmann.
Highly respected commentator on public affairs
also a theorist of democracy.
-During World War I, people who later emerged
as sort of the "Founding Fathers" of modern communication research
modern communication applications, mass media applications-
quite a number of them had worked as propagandists during World War I
often as relatively young people
who were shaping their own ideas at the time.
And one of them was Walter Lippmann. And Lippmann has emerged
really to this day, as a leading intellectual light
of a particular way of looking at society.
-Today, Walter Lippmann is known as the "Dean of American journalism."
Yet during the Great War, he had been chief leaflet writer
and editor of a U.S. propaganda unit.
He also served as Secretary of "The Inquiry"
a quasi-intelligence agency.
Before dealing with Lippmann's contributions to political theory
we first have to understand the forms of democracy
that have characterized the United States and other Western nations
since the age of the great Revolutions.
A leap forward from the age of monarchy
the new nation-states would nevertheless preserve the concept
that wealthy elites had the right to rule over the mass of the population.
-Well, it's done me a sight of good, coming forward in time like this
to see how wonderful things have turned out.
But, I wish I could take you back with me
back in time, back those 200 years
when we were starting as a nation.
I wish you could have seen this country then.
-George Washington was a slave owner.
James Madison was a slave owner.
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner.
Importantly, Jefferson, who was the most democratic of the lot
wasn't at the Philadelphia Convention.
He was Ambassador to France, and he picked up
a lot of radical ideas from the French Revolution
which didn't exactly endear him to people like Alexander Hamilton.
The initial divide in American politics then
goes back to those roots.
It's Jeffersonian Democrats against Federalists
the leader of whom, until he was killed by Burr
was Alexander Hamilton.
Essentially a class struggle, a class conflict.
Thomas Jefferson was, in fact
a fairly radical Democratic thinker in his time.
And clearly, the Declaration's statement
that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident
that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights', was a powerful Democratic statement.
And, although Jefferson would not have applied it to women
or the Indians or to Blacks, nonetheless, in all of those cases
those words would come back to be very serviceable for those groups
in pushing civil rights and civil liberties forward
in the United States from where Jefferson's statement left them.
The problem with the Declaration of Independence
was that once independence was gotten from Britain
then the question became one of governance:
how would these former colonies of Britain be governed?
Well, it led immediately to the Constitutional Convention in 1787
where a series of uprisings by debtors, essentially
not just in Massachusetts the most famous is, of course
the Shays' Rebellion in 1786.
-The American state was founded, largely to get the Ohio Valley
largely to cross the Appalachians
the American, that is the Constitution
to organize an army and money
in order to conquer further lands more to the West.
That's the origin of the U.S.A.
But to do that, the slave-masters are not going to do the fighting
what they will do is hire poor people to do it.
But when they don't pay the poor people, as they didn't pay Daniel Shays
Daniel Shays takes matters into his own hands in 1787
and goes to the courts and shuts down the courts
because the courts were beginning to foreclose
on the grounds that Daniel Shays and the other veterans
from the American War of Independence did not have the money to pay back.
-Debtor riots were happening throughout the 1780's
and they were sufficiently scary from the point of view
of people with property, that they had to do something about it.
And what they did about it was, essentially
overthrow the Articles of Confederation
and instill a much stronger
much more able government to protect the property interests
that were in dire threat from the 'people'.
This was an elitist you could almost say coup d'état
except there wasn't any strong central government
to launch a coup against.
They were really trying to set one up
and protect it against a majoritarian interest
especially economic interest, especially property interest
especially threats from people who didn't have much.
First thing they did when they got to Philadelphia
in 1787 was they locked the doors.
And the only reason we know what happened behind those closed doors
were that people like James Madison kept extensive notes.
-The American Constitution was formulated primarily by James Madison.
He's the major framer of the Constitution and he wanted to overcome
what he called the tyranny of the majority.
He said the primary goal of government
is to ensure that the opulent
are protected from the majority.
So therefore, he designed the Constitution in such a way that
as he put it, the 'wealth of the nation' will be in charge.
The more responsible set of men; those who sympathize
with property owners and their rights.
And the system was designed that way. That power was in the Senate
which was the least representative body
and it was the 'wealth of the nation' and in fact, it still is.
The House of Representatives, which is more democratic in theory
was given much less power.
And the powerful executive is also supposed
to represent the 'wealth of the nation'.
In Madison's defense, one should say
that he was really pre-capitalist in his mentality.
He assumed that the wealthy would be
what he called benevolent gentlemen
who would not be concerned with their own interests
but with the benefit of the people.
Adam Smith, who preceded him, was much more realistic.
He pointed out that the principal architects of policy
namely the merchants and manufacturers in his day
they ensure that policies are designed
so that their own interests are protected
no matter how grievous
the effect on others, including the people of England.
It's rather interesting to compare
Madison's thinking which founded this country
with the first major book on politics
namely Aristotle's Politics.
Aristotle surveyed many kinds of systems
and decided that, of all of them, he didn't like any of them
but he said of all of them, democracy is probably the best.
But he said that democracy has a problem
and it was the same problem that Madison noticed centuries later.
He said, if in Athens everyone had a right to vote
the poor majority would attack the property of the rich
insist that it would be divided, and he also felt that was unfair.
But Madison and Aristotle had opposite solutions.
Madison's solution was to restrict democracy.
Aristotle's solution was to restrict inequality.
-Opponents of the new government were called Anti-Federalists
though the term is inaccurate.
The majority favored some form of federation
but insisted on more localized control
with a more participatory democratic system.
-The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution
they were the price the Federalists had to pay
in the ratifying conventions to pass the document.
So, the democratic element of the Constitution
which, of course, is the Bill of Rights, was forced down their throats.
It didn't come out of Philadelphia at all.
It was appended in 1791
and forced down the Constitution
by the more democratic elements in the society.
Even with the Bill of Rights, we have a system
which is hardly perfect from the point of view of civil rights
and civil liberties, let's put it mildly.
It trampled all over with the rights of citizens.
So the Bill of Rights is hardly an ironclad set of guarantees
for civil rights and civil liberties in the United States.
I hate to think of the United States without it. The Anti-Federalists
were significantly more partial
to democratic elements in the society
and to the rights of ordinary people
than were the significantly more elitist Federalists.
-If the greatest legacy of the Anti-Federalists was the Bill of Rights
their dream of direct democracy was not to be.
At the time, many dissidents made predictions for what they believed
would come to pass as the new nation grew and flourished.
"The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few"
one Anti-Federalist wrote.
Another objected to the new government because
"The bulk of the people can have nothing to say to it;
the government is not a government of the people.
The men of fortune would not feel for the common people.
An aristocratical tyranny would arise
in which the great will struggle for power, honor and wealth.
The poor become a prey to avarice, insolence and oppression.
In short, my fellow citizens, it can be said to be nothing less
than a nasty stride to universal empire."
A significant model for both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists
were the Iroquois, who had created a highly sophisticated
and democratic federation of self-governing units.
In stark contrast to European forms of government
the Iroquois people had the ability to immediately remove corrupt leaders
women played a significant role in decision-making
everyone was permitted to participate in debate and policy formulation.
-Native Americans were exceedingly democratic in the way they operated.
No society is perfect but when you make comparisons
you see that they were sometimes small
but sometimes 30-40 thousand people and more
in a large confederacy
that operated on a basis of mutual respect.
Mutual respect that developed out of experience
because if you didn't treat people equally
then they were going to give you trouble.
Societies were exceedingly collaborative
but they were also exceedingly individualist.
The individual was honored, but the values
were collaborative because you had to get along.
Everybody was included in every decision that affected them.
Elders, obviously, were honored. They knew more.
You listen to your elders. But, everybody had a say.
You had an extremely participatory society
and as it moved up to larger, there was a great deal of decentralization.
So if you had a large number of people
and they would be in a federation, the village would decide for itself
the tribe would then decide.
But the individual villages would have to decide
then the tribes in the federation, their representatives would meet.
But they wouldn't decide for everyone
they'd have to have the consensus of all the people.
So if there wasn't consensus already
they would have to go back and discuss it.
So that, to the extent that there was representation
these were representatives who were truly representative.
They would have to go back
they wouldn't keep their positions unless they consulted people.
And they knew that. Even if they had the authority to make a decision
people would go elsewhere and not keep them as leaders
if they didn't listen to them and they didn't treat them well.
By and large you had a much more participatory society
and even on the larger more representative level
the representatives really had to listen to their constituents.
-Ironically referred to as primitive and savage, Native Americans
had actually created a far more democratic system of self-governance
than any civilized nation in history.
But their anarchic models, as well as the more limited democratic systems
proposed by the Anti-Federalists
were incompatible with Madison's elitist vision.
In republic and parliamentary democracy alike
citizens would be reduced to passive observers.
They would be allowed to pick and choose which individual
made decisions on their behalf
but they would not be able to make those decisions themselves.
Returning to the period after the first World War
we find widespread support amongst intellectuals
for Madison's elitist interpretation of democracy.
According to Walter Lippmann, the public's function in politics
was to be interested spectators of action, but not participants.
Yet Lippmann perceived a problem.
New technologies in communication and transportation
had awakened millions of disenfranchised people
to a new world outside their towns and cities
while traditional economic, political
and social structures remained in place.
Something had to change.
But rather than advocate structural changes in society's institutions
Lippmann suggested that propaganda re-adjust the public mind.
-In his essays on democracy in the 1920s
which are incidentally called 'progressive' essays on democracy
he was a Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal in the American sense.
He says that the majority are simply incompetent
they are ignorant and meddlesome outsiders in his view
that's the majority of the population, and to allow them to participate
in the decision making would be a complete disaster.
So therefore we have to design means
to insure that what he called the responsible men
of whom he was of course one, are protected
from the roar and the trampling of the beasts
the ignorant majority.
(Scream)
And he devised a number of methods;
Lippmann called it the 'manufacture of consent'.
We have to manufacture the consent of the ignorant
and meddlesome outsiders, the mass of the population.
And the huge public relations industry was developed at the same time.
They're the people who manage
and control the marketing exercises
that are called elections in the United States.
They are marketing exercises, and they're well aware of it.
-Apparently we have all been wrong
it is pronounced "Kal - ee - forn - ya."
Ladies and Gentlemen! The governor of the great state of California
Arnold Schwarzenegger!
-So for example, for the last election, 2008
the advertising industry gives a prize every year
for the best marketing campaign of the year.
2008 they gave it to the Obama campaign
who beat out commercial competitors.
The idea is: We market candidates the same way we market toothpaste
or lifestyle drugs or automobiles.
Of course it helps to have a lot of money.
And in fact Obama greatly outspent McCain.
And not because of popular contributions.
They came mostly from financial industries. He was their candidate.
And his policies will presumably respond to his constituents.
-Prominent intellectuals continue to argue that the world's complexity
makes democracy impossible.
A recent cover story in Time Magazine claimed that
"Democracy is in the worst interest of national goals.
The modern world is too complex to allow the man or woman in the street
to interfere in its management."
A man who surely would have agreed was Edward Bernays.
Like Lippmann, Bernays served as a propagandist on the Creel Committee.
And like Lippmann, he went on to re-fashion wartime propaganda
for peacetime aims.
In his classic text "Propaganda" Bernays suggested that elites
"regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army
regiments their bodies."
Bernays considered mass mind control so crucial
that it constituted, in his words
"the very essence of the democratic process."
Bernays' opportunity to shine arose when a crisis threatened
not only the profits of major corporations
but the entire capitalist system.
The solution, as theorized by business leaders
would lead to social breakdown, environmental catastrophe
and further alienation between the American people and their government.
It would also lead to wealth, on a scale never before imagined.
IV. Consumers
-The major story that advertising tells us about human happiness
is that, the way for happiness is through the consumption of things.
That in fact buying of something in the marketplace will make you happy.
In fact that's the message of almost every single ad.
And that's not often you can say that there's one message that is in
the literally millions of ads that are produced every year.
I think that is the message of advertising as a whole
is that it's better to buy than not to buy.
That in fact the way to become... and that you will be happier
as a result of buying than not buying.
And I think that idea in fact is the major force
for global social change, over the last 50 years.
-In the 1920s, business leaders were faced with a dilemma.
Over-production of goods had exceeded demand.
Production between 1860 and 1920
had increased by 12 to 14 times,
while the population only increased by a factor of 3.
There were several ways of solving the problem.
One was to reduce working hours and raise wages
so that production and consumption reach an equilibrium.
This would have lead to more leisure time for workers
and a higher standard of living.
The problem with this solution is that it could have entailed
a slight decrease in profits.
Corporations are mandated by law to maximize profits
on behalf of their shareholders regardless of social
or environmental costs.
According to business leaders, there was another problem.
John Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers
warned that a shorter work week would undermine the work ethic
and potentially ferment radicalism.
If people had time to stop and think, they might also take the time
to re-think their position in life.
"The emphasis should be put on work." Edgerton stated.
"More work and better work, instead of upon leisure."
It seems a harmless enough statement.
But what businessmen were advocating was revolutionary.
Production would no longer be about satisfying human needs.
It would be an end, in and of itself.
Rather than a democracy of ideas
or a democracy of mass participation
the United States would become a democracy of material goods.
The citizen would be replaced by the consumer.
- Look at those goods piled up over there.
I'm worried. Here we are, we've got the new machines
and they're doing even better than we expected.
They've not only cut production costs
but they've increased output over 50%!
But we're not selling this additional product.
Inventories are piling up. Now what are we going to do about it?"
- It seems to me we've got to change our plan completely.
Now that we're increasing production, we've got to put on more pressure
work the territory more intensively.
- You mean more advertising? - Yes.
The problem of capitalism is the problem of consumption.
And the problem is that after your basic needs have been met
there is no real need for consumption.
And so you have to convince people that in fact their identities
are based upon the consumption of objects
for which there is no material need.
That's the problem that comes from the expansion of the market.
If you look at advertising it's a very interesting history.
In the first period of advertising, we can say right up
until about the 1920s
advertising talked about the goods themselves.
They talked about how they were made, what they did
how well they lasted, etc.
It really is, at this course, about objects. About what goods did.
Now starting around 1920, that changes. And from that period on
advertising doesn't really talk about goods themselves
they talk about the relationship of goods to our needs.
-At the center of the new strategy was Edward Bernays.
If Walter Lippmann had concerned himself
with an overarching analysis of mass media in democracy
Bernays would devote most of his energies to propaganda
on behalf of the corporation.
His uncle, Sigmund Freud, would serve as his muse.
Rather than focus on the intrinsic worth of a particular product
Bernays suggested a strategy
where products became linked with the unconscious desires of the public.
In this manner there would be virtually no limits
to either production or consumption.
-Freud's nephew was a man by the name of Bernays, and he's regarded as
the father of modern public relations, particularly in the United States.
His contribution, if you want to call it that
was to take propaganda techniques that had been developed
for military, psychological warfare
national security type issues
during World War I, and apply them in a systematic way to commercial issues.
One of his best known efforts had to do with
encouraging females, women, to smoke.
He would stage beauty pageants, he would stage
what would today be called photo-ops and that sort of thing
in which smoking, by women
was portrayed as women's liberation
was portrayed as a way to be free and empowered
is getting addicted to nicotine.
The audience, the market, in Bernays' mind
had a clear desire to be free
to be stronger, to be more self-empowered.
So women clearly wanted these things
along comes Bernays and the tobacco industry
and says "Here is how to have it."
-Goods don't make us very happy. Goods are not central to satisfaction.
What actually really makes people happy are non-material things.
What makes people happy, seems to be, things connected with sociability.
I don't mean to say by that material things have nothing to do with happiness.
Poor people are not happy. They don't have access to clean drinking water
they don't have access to food, they don't have access to shelter.
So it's not that material things are not connected to happiness
they are to some degree
but, once you get past a certain level of comfort
material things simply don't provide us happiness.
At the same time there is this giant propaganda system of advertising
that is again perpetually telling us that the way to happiness
is through objects, the way to happiness is through consumption.
What makes people happy have things to do with society, with connection
with personal connection
with autonomy, with relaxation.
In fact when you ask people what it is that makes them happy
goods very rarely come into it.
However the problem is that capitalism has to sell goods
the market place provides goods. And therefore
what it did was it took the images
of the life that people really want
which is a life of meaning, of connection
of sociability, of friendship, of family, of intimacy, of sexuality
those are the images that it took, and it linked them to objects.
And so advertising is both true and false at the same time.
If you're simply false, you know it wouldn't work.
But advertising is true to the extent
that it reflects our real desires.
-As bizarre at it may sound for people who dream of fantastic wealth
as a cure for unhappiness, the same holds for the wealthy.
Beyond a certain level of material comfort
deprivation is relative.
-At the bottom level sure it's 5 million to 10 million dollars a year.
But once you've got 5 or 10 million, that doesn't seem like enough
because your associated with people that have 15 or 20.
And when you get to 15 or 20 then it's 50, or 100.
And you wind up never feeling as if you have enough. And in fact
people really never even thought of themselves as rich
even when they were colossally rich
because of this phenomenon that psychologists call relative deprivation.
They were comparing themselves not to you and me, but with each other
in this little world that they come to inhabit.
-In his book "The Status Seekers," Vance Packard
uses the phrase "Merchants of Discontent"
to describe a deliberate strategy by advertisers
of targeting the less affluent with status symbol messages.
For someone with little chance of changing their social conditions in life
consumerism offers a quick fix, that allows people
to feel as though they are climbing the social hierarchy
when in fact they are standing still.
The strategy was particularly evident
in mid-century automobile advertising.
Studies found that people who lived in housing developments
were more likely to park their cars outside of the garage
than those who could afford more expensive homes.
A typical example is this advertisement for Plymouth.
It reads, "We're not wealthy, we just look it."
The American way of life would be characterized by a myth
which would seem to make political activism unnecessary.
In the new democracy of material goods
there were an infinite number of possessions
to be purchased by rich and poor alike.
There was no need to change institutions
because the system was already perfect.
It was called "The American Dream."
And happiness was just one possession away.
-Our young adults.
And the shopping centers are built in their image.
Selling to young adults demands a new kind of marketing.
For these young adults, the shopping centers have built fountains
commissioned statues, put in restaurants
and free standing stairways.
It included banks, loan offices
rental plants, plant nurseries
and places to buy building materials.
The shopping centers see these young adults
as people whose homes are always in need of expansion.
People who buy in large quantities
and truck it away in their cars.
[Car honk] It's a big market."
-In the tinsel and glitter world of Beverly Hills
superstars reign supreme in million dollar mansions
that hold a weird fascination for everyone else.
Visitors rubber-neck for hours
just for a glimpse through the garden gates.
But for one man, already on the ladder to super-stardom
just a look wasn't enough.
For him it was love at first sight.
-We just had, at the time of this filming, it was just a few days ago
there was an incident at a Walmart in Long Island
the day after Thanksgiving, where basically people were lining up
for a sale, 5 in the morning.
And one of the workers there was crushed to death!
Was actually trampled to death by these shoppers.
And when the ambulance arrived
to take the poor guy to the morgue
or to the hospital they didn't want to get out of the way.
They said "I've been waiting here since 5 in the morning! I'm not leaving!'
So there would be a consumer society at its finest.
And oddly enough, exactly to the day 5 years ago
on that day, the day after Thanksgiving
the same thing happened at a Walmart in Orlando.
It was not a worker, it was a woman who was shopping there.
And she wasn't killed, but she was trampled unconscious
and people wouldn't get out of the way for the medics to take her away.
So when you get finally to that point
this is what Marcuse was talking about
and the whole idea of one-dimensional man
was this tremendous emptiness again.
So I'm gonna buy things to fill that emptiness up.
And then we see the religious power of it.
Because if the medics arrive
basically to take the corpse away, or the body to the hospital
and you're not gonna get out of the way because you're gonna save $50 on a DVD player
that suggests something has gone fundamentally wrong!
[shouting, screaming, commotion]
I think there's not much difference
between assuaging your anxiety by buying things
and investing in the American Dream. They seem to go hand in hand.
-The American Dream is a story about how society works.
The American Dream says that if you work hard, you will succeed.
-The bedrock of our economic success is the American Dream.
It's a dream shared in big cities and small towns
across races, regions and religions, that-
If you work hard, you can support a family.
That if you get sick, there will be health care that you can afford.
That you can retire [applause]
with the dignity, and security and respect that you've earned.
That your children can get a good education
and young people can go to college
even if they don't come from a wealthy family.
-And so he says we may start off in different positions.
There are people who are rich and there are people who are poor
and they're born into different kinds of contexts.
But the playing field is level, and that's the dream
of, you know, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.
The problem with that is, that it's actually at odds with how social mobility works.
Social mobility actually is much more based upon class
and upon the resources that you have available to you, into which you are born.
-Hi, I'm Paris Hilton and you're here for The FIT on MySpace.
Let's go check out my shoe closet first.
So welcome to my shoe closet. As you can tell, I really love shoes."
-Part of those are material resources, and part of those
are also cultural resources as well.
There are class structures
that keep people mostly in their places.
There are some slight exceptions to this where there's movement between
one rung or another, but, the level of social mobility
is remarkably low in the society.
And then the American Dream is punctuated by
these very visible examples in the media that show us
people who were poor who are now rich.
And now the question is: If those people are rich
if those people have made it
and the vast majority of the people have not
and the major thing that separates them is their own hard work
then the reason that the vast majority of people are where they are
is because that is where they deserve to be. You didn't work hard enough,
you're not intelligent enough.
-The right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.
Some are smart, some not. Some are successful, some not.
-The United States never had mass prosperity throughout its history.
It was just a period from 1946 to 1980,
where the prosperity was really...
it looked like it was just going better and better, for everybody.
And that came after World War II.
With the backlog of tremendous earnings from war industry and such
the G.I. Bill that came in
that developed a whole new big professional class and the like.
And that lasted to about 1980.
Since then there have been cutbacks to human services
cutbacks in educational opportunities
and greater and greater inequality.
Since 2000 to 2008
the inequality between the very rich and the rest of us
that inequaility is greater than it's been throughout the 20th century.
So we're back to like 1900 in terms of inequality.
Everybody just can't make it.
Throughout history, the rich have always argued
that the poor are the authors of their own poverty.
They're poor because they're stupid
they're disreputable, they're hopeless...
People are poor because they are paid less
than the value that they produce.
You need poverty. Poverty is needed if you're gonna have wealth.
The only way a rich slaveholder, a Roman senator
or antebellum plantation owner in the south
the only way they could live in this fabulously luxurious mode
is by having slaves who work
from the crack of dawn down into the night.
That's expropriation. That's creating
the poverty of the slave, or the serf or the worker
so that the slaveholder, or the lord, the feudal lord
or the plutocrats, the capitalists can really accumulate wealth.
-The idea that human happiness is connected to
the immense accumulation of commodities
I think that that idea is what is driving development
in what we used to call the developed world
it is driving development in China, it is driving development in India
I think it will increasingly drive development in Africa as well.
I think we're starting to see
the results of what that means for the planet.
When not only the 5 percent American population strives for that
but when increasingly the rest of the world also is pulled into that.
And you then have to provide the goods
and the energy that those goods take to produce.
We're arriving at the kind of exhaustion of the physical planet.
The ancient philosopher Confucius, he was asked
what he would do if he was ever to rule the state.
Someone said "OK you're in charge of the state, what would you do?"
And he said a very interesting thing, he said he would "rectify the language."
And I think if he was asked that in modern day he would say
"Let me control the media." If you can control the stories
you don't need to have soldiers on the street corners to control them
you can control people in their own heads and their own imaginations.
On one end it's really depressing because it's like: "how do you then get out of it?"
Because there's no way you can have control of the media
there's no way you can compete with these stories that are told
thousands of times a day.
Through advertising, through programming, through newspapers.
Through the Internet now, through video games, through all kinds of ways.
But the reason I'm hopeful the reason that actually gives me some optimism is
that capitalism has to do that.
That unless it does that, they know that things will fall apart.
So capitalism in essence is like a house of cards.
A house of cards that has to be constantly held together.
We have to be told every single day what this story is.
They have to do it every day because it's unnatural.
If it was natural they wouldn't have to do it.
And if they stop they know that in fact it would fall apart.
That actually is the great hope for me:
is in fact, the amount of time they have to spend
convincing us about the value of the society
is in fact what gives me hope
that there's an alternative, just below the surface
And that alternative is much more human, much more compassionate
it's much more connected to concern for other people
it's much more connected to concern for the planet.
And that it's being held down by this incredible
and relentless propaganda system.
V. Epilogue
-If a decision is made by a centralized authority, it's going to represent
the interests of the particular group in power.
If power is actually rooted in large parts of the population
if people can actually participate in social planning
then they will presumably do so in terms of their own interests.
So that's why Madison for example
and Lippmann and Bernays, and a whole host of others
have argued that we cannot permit the population to participate.
Because if they do they will pursue their own interests.
Not the interests of the wealth of the nation.
If you have centralized power they'll use it for their own interests.
You don't have to read that in a complicated textbook
it's understandable by any 10 year old child
not by "educated people"
that have had it driven out of their heads.
Various illusions replacing self serving illusions.
If the population are participants they'll serve their own interests.
Public opinion is very well studied.
So we have a wealth of information about what the public wants.
And there's a huge disconnect
between public opinion and public policy.
The public and policymakers differ enormously on crucial issues.
It's all very natural... nothing surprising about it
and people understand it.
So about 80 percent of the population of the United States
says that
the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.
-What do you mean by democracy? If you mean by democracy
a system that accepts
that the relative distribution of power
and influence and wealth and income
in the society is sacrosanct
if the social system we call and know as capitalism
is inviolable
and you can't in fact erode
or undercut the primacy
of that classes' power and property, politically
then you've just ruled out democracy.
The founders had a very clear idea
that in order for political power to be democratic and to be equal
economic power also had to be democratic and equal.
And that was the last thing they wanted.
So they saw clearly, that
behind political democracy
was economic democracy.
Behind political equality was economic equality.
And they did everything they could to block it.
-The claims of mind control
are based on the belief
that human beings are powerless or relatively powerless
when they become targets of psychological operations and propaganda.
Media control yeah, it has an impact on public opinion
without a doubt. It has an impact on the assumptions
that people bring, to try to figure out what to do with their lives.
It's powerful. But it's not the same as mind control.
I think the best way to stop propaganda
is for people to understand what it is and how it works.
I don't think we're going to stop propaganda
so long as we have freedom of speech.
And frankly I think that's a good thing for us.
But there will always be people who exploit freedom of speech for their own ends.
But, propaganda loses its effectiveness
if people understand what is going on.
A very important thing that can be done to reduce the power of propaganda
is to force the players to the surface.
So that, where you have campaigns
political campaigns, product campaigns, cultural campaigns
that are organized by big propaganda agencies, public relations agencies.
Then, part of the task for people who are observing this going on
is to make this public. Make it understood
that what's appearing on the front page of the Washington Post for example
really is a propaganda or public relations campaign.
It's coming from a particular faction of society
who are paying for it. And, that they have names.
-It depends on what people believe, what people perceive
what people know. And for a democracy to really function and thrive
unlike Eddie Bernays, I would say
what we need is more information, more freedom, more transparency
and more information about who's manipulating public opinion
and the public mind. Eddie Bernays believed that fundamentally
people were unable to govern themselves in a democracy
because most of us were just too dumb to figure it out.
And so he used that to justify his practice
that he exalted, of managing and manipulating public opinion.
I think actually what we need is a lot more exposure
and education about how public opinion is managed and manipulated
so that we have a citizenry that can actually
function and be critical thinkers and decision makers
and govern themselves in a democracy.
Clearly, individual and public opinion
is crucial to everything.
As long as you can manage and manipulate public opinion,
or as Burson-Marsteller liked to put it, 'public perception'
you can control public behavior and policy.
That's what Eddie Bernays knew. That's what he was saying
when he talked about engineering consent.
And so yeah, I believe that the ultimate battlefield
really is in the mind.
Psywars is part of a series. Please visit Metanoia-Films.org for other entries.
Written and Directed by Scott Noble
Narrated by Mikela Jay
Metanoia-Films.org