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This film is not for sale or distribution.

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Psywars contains controversial subject matter. Creators of source material

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may or may not agree with certain views presented.

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Psyops: 'Psychological Operations'  Any form of communication in support of

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objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitiudes or  behavior

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of any group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.

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Department of Defense, US Army Field Manual 33-I

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There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind.

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In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind - Napoleon Bonaparte

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-Here in the United States, we're often brought up

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and told we don't have propaganda

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that we have a hard charging investigative press.

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We have this educated, skeptical, even cynical citizenry

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and that if there were powerful interests trying to manage or manipulate

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public opinion, they would be exposed.

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The reality actually is just the opposite.

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Academics like Alex Carey and others

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who've spent their lifetimes looking at how propaganda works

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finds that it's actually in western democracies and open societies

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where you need the most sophisticated sorts of propaganda.

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And since World War I, thanks to people like Ivy Lee and Eddie Bernays

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propaganda has become a business, this business of public relations.

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Or as one of the firms that has often represented dictators

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the Burson-Marsteller firm, puts it:

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Their business is perception management

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to manage public perception, public policy

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on behalf of their clients, whoever they might be.

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Metanoia Pictures Presents

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In association with "I Am The Mob"

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A Film by Scott Noble

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-April 9th, 2003

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Throngs of Iraqis spontaneously attack a statue of Saddam Hussein

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the face obscured with Old Glory.

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Later, the Stars & Stripes are replaced with red, white and black

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symbolizing the transference of power from the liberators to the liberated.

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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld describes the scenes as "breathtaking".

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To the British Army, they're "historic".

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BBC Radio calls them "amazing".

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And they were. Because the entire event was staged.

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Years after the operation, a U.S. Army report

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admitted that the toppling of the Saddam statue

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had been engineered by a psychological operations group.

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The document states: "Our TPT-- or Tactical Psyop Team--

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saw the statue as a target of opportunity."

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A week earlier, another psychological operation

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laid the groundwork for what followed.

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The script was for a female Rambo turned damsel-in-distress

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to be rescued by U.S. Armed Forces.

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-In the situation that we're talking about here, with Private Lynch

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as you know, on about the 23rd of March

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her 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed.

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A number of the members of that maintenance company

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were killed, a number were captured, and a number

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were unaccounted for, she being one of them.

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-They waited 24 hours to get the cameras there, to set up the whole thing

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to make this big rescue, and the SWAT team goes in to save her

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and then she becomes an instant celebrity overnight.

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That story happened on the same day

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that the tanks were rolling into Baghdad.

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That's the same day that we shelled

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the Palestine hotel where the independent journalists were.

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The same day we blew up Al Jazeera's television station

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and killed one of their journalists.

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All we're getting on the front pages of the papers

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and in the news is the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

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So, that was a PR substitute story.

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Toppling the Saddam statue, they got Chalabi's group.

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The Rendon Group had actually formed them.

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The CIA paid the Rendon Group to form the Iraqi Congress

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as a counter-group to Saddam Hussein, and they were based here in the U.S.

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Then they flew them over there and they shipped them into Iraq.

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They were the ones that were standing around the statue

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as a tank was used to pull it over.

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The Rendon Group had been around--he worked for George W.'s father

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and he worked for Clinton too.

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His firm ... He used to be a public relations press guy for Carter

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and he created a PR firm that specialized in war.

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-The head of the Rendon Group, John Rendon

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denies that he is a "national security strategist" or a "military tactician".

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Rather, he states: "I am a politician

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and a person who uses communication to meet public policy

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or corporate policy objectives.

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In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager."

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Following the First Gulf War, Rendon was paid $23 million by the CIA

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to create anti-Saddam propaganda.

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Following 9/11, he was charged with public relations

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for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon is far from alone.

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Public relations has mushroomed into a $200 billion a year industry

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with PR "flacks" in the United States now outnumbering journalists.

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Propaganda has become the primary means by which

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the wealthy communicate with the rest of society.

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Whether selling a product, a political candidate, a law, or a war

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seldom do the powerful deliver messages to the public

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before consulting their colleagues in the public relations industry.

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Colin Powell presents a now typical case. He didn't choose

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a seasoned diplomat for the position of Under Secretary of State.

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Instead, he chose Charlotte Beers

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known in PR circles as "The Queen of Madison Avenue."

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Her resumé includes successful advertising campaigns

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for Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo

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Uncle Ben's rice

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and now, Uncle Sam.

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-You see a news show. You watch 60 Minutes

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or a Fox program, or whatever it is.

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You tend to give more credibility

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to what you're told is journalism.

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If an advertisement comes on

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hopefully you tend to be more skeptical of that

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because obviously, somebody put an awful lot of money

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into crafting this slick TV ad and airing it.

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But what you probably never suspect

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is that that news story you just watched was also crafted

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by a company, given to the TV station or network

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with the understanding that they would put their own logos on it

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identify it as real journalism, and air it.

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-Colonel Sam Gardiner would eventually chart 50 false news stories

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created and leaked by the Bush White House propaganda apparatus

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prior to and during the assault on Iraq.

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Foremost amongst these were the lies that led to the war in the first place.

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"It was not bad intelligence that led to the invasion", concludes Gardiner

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"It was an orchestrated effort that began before the war"

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and was "meticulously planned" to manipulate the public.

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-In 2002, when the Bush administration was conducting

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its massive public relations campaign to sell the war

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out of Donald Rumsfeld's office in the Pentagon

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there was something now referred to as the Pentagon pundits program

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where literally scores of former high-ranking military

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generals and admirals and colonels

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were getting their talking points for their appearances on TV news shows

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directly from the Pentagon. They would literally go to the Pentagon

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be on phone conferences with the Pentagon, travel with the Pentagon

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and then go on TV as supposedly independent sources.

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Although most of them were actually being paid in the private sector

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because these were retired military officials by defense contractors

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and many of them were actually registered lobbyists for military contractors.

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So there's a bit of a conflict of interest right away

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when your bread and butter is based on

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being able to sell armaments and bombs and missiles

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and you're supposed to be just a patriotic ex-general

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giving an honest opinion to what's going on.

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And even though that's illegal, there's no way to really stop it.

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And the most powerful medium through which it occurred

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refuses to even report on the scandal.

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You've got just a massive problem, and that's where we're at.

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-There were clear warning signs long before the age of the "imbed."

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During the assault on Serbia, under President Clinton

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a report emerged about the Dutch journalist Abe De Vries

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revealing the presence of "psywarriors" working at CNN.

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They derived from the Third Psychological Operations Battalion

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at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina.

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De Vries quoted Major Thomas Collins of the U.S. Army Information Service:

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"Psyops personnel, soldiers and officers

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have been working in CNN's headquarters in Atlanta

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through our program, training with industry.

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They helped in the production of news."

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What made the Iraq War different were not so much the tactics

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or even the scale, but the high-tech synergy.

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It was almost impossible to tell where the state ended

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and the "Fourth Estate" began.

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-One of the things that we don't want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq

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because in a few days we're going to own that country.

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-Should they have used more? Should they

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use a 'MOAB,' the mother of all bombs?

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A few daisy cutters?

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And let's not just stop at a couple of cruise missiles.

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-The invasion of Iraq represents a pinnacle

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of domestic psywar in the United States.

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An unparalleled integration between public relations firms

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corporate media and military psyops.

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At the time of the assault, large segments of the American public

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were convinced that a nuclear attack by Saddam Hussein on their nation

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was not only possible, but imminent.

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Soldiers who comprised the invading force were similarly confused

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with a remarkable 77% believing that Hussein

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was responsible for the attacks of 9/11.

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Many earnestly believed that the mission was to destroy a mysterious group

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known as Al Qaeda, while bringing freedom to the Iraqi people.

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-"Go home Yankee!" -"We're here for your f***ing freedom

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so back up right now!"

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-Yet, what was actually happening was what the Nuremberg Charter describes

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as the single greatest crime under international law:

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The "Planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of aggression."

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Seven years later, the results of the invasion are clear.

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According to "The Lancet," one of Britain's most respected medical journals,

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approximately 600,000 Iraqis have been killed from the invasion as of 2006.

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By 2009, a polling agency put the number at over 1 million.

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Four million Iraqis have been made refugees in their own country.

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Their entire society is shattered.

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How did the land of the free and the home of the brave

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arrive at a place where citizens could be manipulated

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with such efficiency and on such a massive scale?

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Our story begins in an unlikely place: a coal mine.

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Psywar

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I. Perception Management

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When we think of public relations, this is not an image that springs to mind.

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Yet it was here, at the turn of the century

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in the town of Ludlow, Colorado

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that PR as we know it began to take shape.

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From the beginning, it was steeped in class warfare.

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-The conditions that men, women and children

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worked under in 19th century America

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were very much like what we think of now as

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the conditions in the 'global South'

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in which 13-14 hour days were not uncommon.

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Living conditions were often in barrack-like housing.

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Children worked right alongside their parents.

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Those were the kind of conditions and certainly, if you picture

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what we see in the global South today, almost slave-like conditions.

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You can make the comparison pretty easily.

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-Like workers in most other industries at the time

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the coal miners in the town of Ludlow were organizing to win basic rights.

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In 1914, the United Mine Workers Union called for coal companies to grant

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safe working conditions, tolerable wages

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and compliance with state mining laws.

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In response, a labor organizer at Ludlow was shot to death

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by gunmen working for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation

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owned by the Rockefeller family.

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Then, as now, the Rockefellers were synonymous with wealth and power.

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William Avery Rockefeller had made a living as a literal snake oil salesman

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but his son, John Davidson had achieved the American Dream.

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His fortune was built by exploiting oil reserves in Mexico and the United States.

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John Davidson Rockefeller was America's first billionaire

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but it was his son, John D. Jr.

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who would define the Rockefeller legacy in the 20th century.

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Twenty-four hours after striking workers and their families celebrated Easter

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the end came. It became known as the Ludlow Massacre.

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-The strike went on from the fall of 1913, to the spring of 1914

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and they still couldn't break the strike. The strikers were living in tent colonies

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set up by their union, the United Mine Workers, and in April of 1914

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the National Guard, which was at this time being paid by the Rockefellers

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the National Guard attacked the tent colony of men, women, children

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killed many people, set the tents afire.

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They found the next day the bodies of 11 children and two women

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who were burned, suffocated to death in that fire.

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That was called the Ludlow Massacre.

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-A brief glance at events prior to Ludlow

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reveals that the brutalization of workers in the United States

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was not an unusual occurrence.

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Sixty years earlier, in 1847, a nation-wide general strike

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was met with violent oppression by federal troops.

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Over 30 workers were killed, and 100 wounded

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at "The Battle of the Viaduct" in Chicago.

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In 1894, Federal troops killed 34 American railway union members

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also in the Chicago area. The troops were attempting to break a strike

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00:17:03,224 --> 00:17:07,151
led by Eugene Debs against the Pullman Company.

246
00:17:09,478 --> 00:17:14,854
In 1897, 19 unarmed coal miners were killed and 36 wounded

247
00:17:15,003 --> 00:17:19,490
by a posse organized by a sheriff near Lattimer, Pennsylvania.

248
00:17:19,628 --> 00:17:23,669
Most of the workers were shot in the back while attempting to flee.

249
00:17:23,819 --> 00:17:26,780
The worldview of the great capitalists at the turn of the century

250
00:17:26,909 --> 00:17:29,431
can be summed up in the words of William Vanderbilt.

251
00:17:29,575 --> 00:17:32,791
In response to a suggestion that the New York Central Railroad

252
00:17:32,935 --> 00:17:36,058
should adjust its train schedules to accommodate the public

253
00:17:36,201 --> 00:17:39,533
he replied: "The public be damned!"

254
00:17:41,641 --> 00:17:46,632
But the relationship between the public and corporations was changing.

255
00:18:12,946 --> 00:18:15,611
Decades of organizing and rebellion had given rise

256
00:18:15,755 --> 00:18:19,697
to a vast network of labor groups with increasing political power.

257
00:18:19,834 --> 00:18:24,196
Over time, these included the Grange movement, the Socialist Party

258
00:18:24,340 --> 00:18:27,768
the Greenbackers, the Populists and Progressives.

259
00:18:27,906 --> 00:18:30,877
And perhaps most significantly, the anarchist union

260
00:18:31,021 --> 00:18:35,601
known as the Industrial Workers of the World, or the "Wobblies."

261
00:18:35,738 --> 00:18:39,367
Following the massacre at Ludlow, soldiers in Denver refused to participate

262
00:18:39,511 --> 00:18:42,927
in further attacks against the miners, declaring that

263
00:18:43,064 --> 00:18:45,990
they would not engage in the shooting of women and children.

264
00:18:46,134 --> 00:18:49,431
Demonstrations erupted across the country.

265
00:18:50,552 --> 00:18:54,381
A march occurred in front of the Rockefeller offices in New York City.

266
00:18:54,531 --> 00:18:57,042
A clergyman protested outside a church where Rockefeller

267
00:18:57,179 --> 00:19:01,197
liked to give sermons, only to be beaten by police.

268
00:19:02,479 --> 00:19:07,146
In modern parlance, it was a PR nightmare.

269
00:19:10,372 --> 00:19:14,977
-Ivy Lee went to work for, among other clients, the Rockefellers.

270
00:19:15,127 --> 00:19:20,123
The Rockefeller family, after the Ludlow massacre

271
00:19:20,264 --> 00:19:22,521
hired, used Ivy Lee

272
00:19:22,665 --> 00:19:27,568
to manage the public perception around that event and other events.

273
00:19:27,723 --> 00:19:31,527
Ivy Lee's specialty was crisis management.

274
00:19:31,671 --> 00:19:35,387
Among other things, he is credited with inventing the press release

275
00:19:35,531 --> 00:19:39,503
which all of us just sort of think of as something helpful.

276
00:19:39,653 --> 00:19:43,240
You want to publicize an event? A church picnic? Call a news conference?

277
00:19:43,384 --> 00:19:45,981
You put out a press release.

278
00:19:46,125 --> 00:19:48,424
But at the time, the idea was very radical

279
00:19:48,566 --> 00:19:50,796
because what Ivy Lee was saying is:

280
00:19:50,940 --> 00:19:54,677
"Well, we're going to manage this crisis by calling attention to it.

281
00:19:54,820 --> 00:19:56,829
We're going to actually assist and help

282
00:19:56,948 --> 00:20:00,158
the news media and journalists in covering it."

283
00:20:00,302 --> 00:20:04,200
What he knew was that the degree to which journalists became

284
00:20:04,347 --> 00:20:07,799
used to and dependent on his services was the degree

285
00:20:07,943 --> 00:20:12,660
to which he could actually cultivate and manage coverage.

286
00:20:15,123 --> 00:20:17,961
-Lee began by waging a disinformation campaign.

287
00:20:18,105 --> 00:20:22,409
He put out news bulletins claiming that the 2 women and 11 children at Ludlow

288
00:20:22,547 --> 00:20:26,668
had not been killed by militia, but by an overturned stove.

289
00:20:26,812 --> 00:20:29,316
He circulated stories suggesting that Mother Jones

290
00:20:29,466 --> 00:20:33,903
in addition to being a labor organizer, was a madame who ran a bordello.

291
00:20:34,047 --> 00:20:37,993
He ghostwrote letters to the Governor, and even to President Wilson.

292
00:20:38,143 --> 00:20:40,660
Lee's techniques achieved little success

293
00:20:40,802 --> 00:20:45,013
in part because he himself had become a highly visible figure.

294
00:20:45,169 --> 00:20:48,989
In the future, PR experts would learn that their techniques

295
00:20:49,133 --> 00:20:52,386
are rarely effective unless practiced in the dark.

296
00:20:52,537 --> 00:20:55,450
Yet, one of Lee's innovations was epoch-making.

297
00:20:55,609 --> 00:20:57,618
Upon learning that the Rockefeller Foundation

298
00:20:57,750 --> 00:21:01,147
had $100 million set aside for promotional purposes

299
00:21:01,291 --> 00:21:04,859
he convinced Rockefeller to donate large sums to colleges

300
00:21:05,003 --> 00:21:08,354
hospitals, churches and charitable organizations

301
00:21:08,498 --> 00:21:11,160
in order to generate positive publicity.

302
00:21:11,298 --> 00:21:15,611
He also suggested that Rockefeller Sr. begin handing out money in public

303
00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:20,009
and that Jr. appear in staged photo ops at work sites.

304
00:21:21,232 --> 00:21:25,518
What Ivy Lee understood was that the corporation needed a makeover.

305
00:21:25,668 --> 00:21:28,771
Widely perceived as greedy, tyrannical institutions

306
00:21:28,921 --> 00:21:33,609
corporations needed to manufacture an image of warmth and caring.

307
00:21:34,135 --> 00:21:39,184
-This was the beginning of the public relations industry.

308
00:21:39,672 --> 00:21:43,974
Rockefeller didn't set up the Rockefeller Foundation

309
00:21:44,125 --> 00:21:49,356
until Rockefeller became very unpopular because of his labor policies.

310
00:21:49,500 --> 00:21:54,522
And suddenly, Rockefeller needed to create a good impression.

311
00:21:55,103 --> 00:21:57,742
-Well, it's an interesting phenomenon that the poor actually give

312
00:21:57,885 --> 00:22:00,259
a larger percentage of their income

313
00:22:00,397 --> 00:22:02,751
than the rich.

314
00:22:02,895 --> 00:22:06,373
I think the rich feel they're doing more because

315
00:22:06,517 --> 00:22:11,334
giving a $100,000 seems like a substantial kind of donation

316
00:22:12,937 --> 00:22:16,076
and it doesn't matter that they have a $100 million.

317
00:22:16,216 --> 00:22:19,074
They still think, well, they've done quite a lot.

318
00:22:19,224 --> 00:22:22,892
So, it's partly a result of this distortion of economic values

319
00:22:23,030 --> 00:22:26,000
and it's partly the result of being cheap.

320
00:22:26,200 --> 00:22:28,566
People don't want to give away their wealth

321
00:22:28,708 --> 00:22:30,954
Ted Turner said, because they're afraid their status

322
00:22:31,092 --> 00:22:33,948
in the Forbes 400 is going to go down that little bit.

323
00:22:34,100 --> 00:22:37,340
So they give it away when it's prudent or when it's beneficial

324
00:22:37,481 --> 00:22:40,803
when they can get some displayed benefit out of it

325
00:22:40,946 --> 00:22:44,570
or when it can give them access to a different sort of social class

326
00:22:44,702 --> 00:22:47,592
or a different group that they want to be a part of.

327
00:22:47,736 --> 00:22:50,896
But, they have a more functional view of their wealth

328
00:22:51,027 --> 00:22:54,062
rather than a strictly charitable view.

329
00:22:54,206 --> 00:22:57,786
-Charity, and private charity, and you might say government charity

330
00:22:57,930 --> 00:23:01,360
any kind of action

331
00:23:01,504 --> 00:23:04,898
that relieves people's distress a little bit

332
00:23:05,042 --> 00:23:08,169
without changing the system, maintains the system.

333
00:23:08,312 --> 00:23:10,694
In fact that is the way that the American system

334
00:23:10,838 --> 00:23:13,593
which is very exploitative and very unfair

335
00:23:13,731 --> 00:23:16,210
that's the way the American system is being maintained

336
00:23:16,354 --> 00:23:18,793
for all these centuries, really.

337
00:23:18,940 --> 00:23:22,241
By giving people a little bit

338
00:23:22,388 --> 00:23:25,610
and giving enough people just enough

339
00:23:25,750 --> 00:23:29,360
to prevent them from breaking out in open rebellion.

340
00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:34,884
-Today, one of the largest PR firms in the world

341
00:23:35,028 --> 00:23:38,564
specializes in the art of crisis management.

342
00:23:40,071 --> 00:23:42,942
Burson-Marsteller holds offices in 35 countries

343
00:23:43,086 --> 00:23:46,216
and has served clients as varied as cigarette make Phillip Morris

344
00:23:46,360 --> 00:23:50,254
chemical giant Union Carbide and the Monsanto Corporation

345
00:23:50,405 --> 00:23:54,698
a company specializing in genetic engineering and other life sciences.

346
00:23:54,842 --> 00:23:59,260
Like the Rendon Group, Burson-Marsteller is bipartisan to the core.

347
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:02,564
Its worldwide president and chief executive, Mark Penn

348
00:24:02,714 --> 00:24:07,959
served as Hillary Clinton's key political adviser during the 2008 election.

349
00:24:13,390 --> 00:24:15,895
The most disturbing facet of Burson-Marsteller

350
00:24:16,039 --> 00:24:20,076
is its willingness to work with the world's worst human rights violators.

351
00:24:20,226 --> 00:24:22,412
They ran PR for the Indonesian government

352
00:24:22,556 --> 00:24:25,957
as it committed genocide in East Timor.

353
00:24:27,942 --> 00:24:31,492
They worked closely with the Nigerian government and Royal Dutch Shell

354
00:24:31,642 --> 00:24:34,596
during and after the Biafran War in Nigeria.

355
00:24:34,740 --> 00:24:37,070
And they helped to improve the image of a U.S. backed

356
00:24:37,214 --> 00:24:41,658
Argentine military junta, led by General Jorge Videla.

357
00:24:44,218 --> 00:24:48,492
-One of their clients in the 1970's was the

358
00:24:48,630 --> 00:24:52,450
brutal Argentine junta which had taken control of the government there

359
00:24:52,598 --> 00:24:58,716
and was rounding up dissidents, systematically torturing, beating, killing

360
00:24:58,860 --> 00:25:04,001
people and flying out over the ocean and dumping bodies.

361
00:25:07,417 --> 00:25:09,461
Not a really good public image.

362
00:25:09,605 --> 00:25:13,706
So, the Burson-Marsteller firm was used by Argentina

363
00:25:13,850 --> 00:25:17,781
hired by Argentina and went to work for them quite happily

364
00:25:17,931 --> 00:25:22,959
under a fat contract to improve the image of Argentina

365
00:25:23,109 --> 00:25:28,086
in the international financial community and in the Western press.

366
00:25:29,292 --> 00:25:32,304
-In some ways, it should not be surprising that public relations

367
00:25:32,435 --> 00:25:36,255
has evolved into companies like Burson-Marsteller and the Rendon Group.

368
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:38,780
Looking back at the career of its first guru

369
00:25:38,924 --> 00:25:42,376
we find a remarkably similar pattern.

370
00:25:43,918 --> 00:25:47,959
-Ivy Lee went to work for the IG Farben company

371
00:25:48,103 --> 00:25:52,900
a big German industrial company, and we know now that IG Farben

372
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:57,610
was actually part of the Nazi propaganda inner circle.

373
00:25:57,747 --> 00:26:00,909
One of the most effective and, of course, horrifying

374
00:26:01,059 --> 00:26:04,989
government propaganda campaigns ever organized

375
00:26:05,133 --> 00:26:08,526
was the Nazi campaign that continued for years and years

376
00:26:08,670 --> 00:26:13,278
under the direction of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

377
00:26:14,260 --> 00:26:20,819
And IG Farben paid Ivy Lee and also paid Ivy Lee's son to represent

378
00:26:20,969 --> 00:26:26,806
not just their interests, but the interests of Nazi Germany in an effort to

379
00:26:26,950 --> 00:26:30,270
paint the Nazi regime as

380
00:26:30,419 --> 00:26:34,366
being a friendly regime.

381
00:26:34,995 --> 00:26:37,398
-But before lending his expertise to the Third Reich

382
00:26:37,542 --> 00:26:40,666
Mr. Lee would do so for the American government.

383
00:26:40,817 --> 00:26:43,702
Along with other experts in the burgeoning field of mind science and

384
00:26:43,851 --> 00:26:47,944
public relations, he would engineer propaganda for World War I

385
00:26:48,094 --> 00:26:50,878
not just against the enemy, the Germans

386
00:26:51,022 --> 00:26:54,500
but against the American people themselves.

387
00:26:58,918 --> 00:27:03,056
II. Propagating the Faith

388
00:27:05,699 --> 00:27:08,809
-We often talk about the propaganda being relatively recent

389
00:27:08,953 --> 00:27:10,755
but of course, it isn't.

390
00:27:10,899 --> 00:27:14,630
Even in ancient societies that weren't democratic

391
00:27:14,774 --> 00:27:18,275
especially large states, it was understood by elites that

392
00:27:18,413 --> 00:27:22,205
if you don't have the support of the people, you could be in trouble.

393
00:27:22,349 --> 00:27:25,731
And so, a fair bit of attention was actually given to

394
00:27:25,900 --> 00:27:29,650
legitimizing military adventures.

395
00:27:29,888 --> 00:27:32,547
I'm remembering here a passage from an old Chinese text

396
00:27:32,691 --> 00:27:36,623
I think it's Han Fei Tzu, so it would be about 2300 years ago

397
00:27:36,828 --> 00:27:40,238
where the author of the book says: "In general,"- and I'm quoting now-

398
00:27:40,369 --> 00:27:44,051
'In general, war is a thing that the people despise.

399
00:27:44,214 --> 00:27:48,245
Therefore, when a young man is to be sent off to war, his wife

400
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:51,242
his parents, his family, should gather around him and say to him

401
00:27:51,386 --> 00:27:55,617
'Conquer, or let me never see you again'."

402
00:27:55,773 --> 00:27:58,450
And this is a very powerful sense of--

403
00:27:58,594 --> 00:28:01,505
Well, first of all, the violence done to that young man.

404
00:28:01,649 --> 00:28:04,723
But also of the sense that

405
00:28:04,869 --> 00:28:07,653
war is disgusting to most people

406
00:28:07,788 --> 00:28:10,570
and it is often not in their best interest

407
00:28:10,719 --> 00:28:14,710
and therefore, one needs all kinds of songs and dances

408
00:28:14,861 --> 00:28:16,827
and in this case

409
00:28:16,965 --> 00:28:19,334
threatening the young man, essentially, with dispossession.

410
00:28:19,478 --> 00:28:22,785
You can't return to your family. You can't return home.

411
00:28:22,928 --> 00:28:25,477
You'll be disgraced. Honor, security

412
00:28:25,620 --> 00:28:29,843
everything has been played upon here. And it continues.

413
00:28:32,581 --> 00:28:36,134
So yeah, national security is one of the most powerful notions

414
00:28:36,284 --> 00:28:40,135
in modern times, to swindle, I think, people

415
00:28:40,286 --> 00:28:43,576
to do things that are not in their best interest

416
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:47,700
and to support massive military complexes

417
00:28:47,844 --> 00:28:49,780
that are not in anybody's interest

418
00:28:49,936 --> 00:28:54,315
but that are like cancers feeding on society for a career.

419
00:28:55,083 --> 00:28:59,315
-Propaganda and persuasion have been around for centuries.

420
00:28:59,459 --> 00:29:02,175
But propaganda in its modern sense

421
00:29:02,307 --> 00:29:05,859
can be traced to the 15th and 16th century

422
00:29:06,003 --> 00:29:10,779
when the Catholic Church was in a tough competition with the Protestants

423
00:29:10,929 --> 00:29:16,426
over how to articulate a religious vision for the world.

424
00:29:16,581 --> 00:29:19,980
And the reason that I mention this is that it shows

425
00:29:20,130 --> 00:29:23,149
that propaganda is about mindset.

426
00:29:23,293 --> 00:29:28,098
It's about ideology. It's about worldview: how people see things

427
00:29:28,249 --> 00:29:30,848
as distinct from an individual policy

428
00:29:30,998 --> 00:29:34,310
or whether you happen to like this candidate or that candidate.

429
00:29:34,460 --> 00:29:37,912
So, that's where the word came from:

430
00:29:38,056 --> 00:29:41,046
for "propagating the faith".

431
00:29:42,063 --> 00:29:45,640
And that's the way the word was used up until the early 20th century.

432
00:29:45,777 --> 00:29:49,954
And then, what emerged, particularly with World War I

433
00:29:50,104 --> 00:29:54,903
was the application of this 'propagating the faith'

434
00:29:55,041 --> 00:29:58,000
to refer to international affairs

435
00:29:58,139 --> 00:30:01,270
to refer to what a national government would do

436
00:30:01,414 --> 00:30:04,310
a national security policy.

437
00:30:29,447 --> 00:30:32,870
In the run-up to World War I, and during World War I

438
00:30:33,014 --> 00:30:38,378
what one saw in the geopolitical stage was a crisis of empires.

439
00:30:38,522 --> 00:30:41,692
Empires were disintegrating; they were falling apart.

440
00:30:41,836 --> 00:30:45,429
The British Empire seemed extremely strong at that time

441
00:30:45,580 --> 00:30:49,072
and yet nevertheless was in a downward phase.

442
00:30:49,216 --> 00:30:52,841
It couldn't afford to support its own army, for example.

443
00:30:52,979 --> 00:30:56,952
Same with the French. Same with the Austro-Hungarians.

444
00:30:57,102 --> 00:31:00,201
Same with the Russians, the Tsarist Empire.

445
00:31:00,351 --> 00:31:04,312
Same with Ottoman Turkish Empire, and so on around the world.

446
00:31:04,462 --> 00:31:09,072
When that war was underway

447
00:31:09,209 --> 00:31:12,257
most particularly the United Kingdom

448
00:31:12,394 --> 00:31:16,133
came up with an office whose specific purpose

449
00:31:16,276 --> 00:31:21,100
was promoting the war aims of the United Kingdom, the English

450
00:31:21,244 --> 00:31:24,604
through publicity, through covert operations

451
00:31:24,754 --> 00:31:29,400
through what would today be called dirty tricks, through telling the truth

452
00:31:29,536 --> 00:31:34,729
through a whole number of different applications of information

453
00:31:34,873 --> 00:31:38,452
using information as an instrument of war.

454
00:31:40,110 --> 00:31:42,360
And from the get-go, from the very beginning

455
00:31:42,516 --> 00:31:46,877
it was both aimed at the enemy

456
00:31:47,027 --> 00:31:49,434
and aimed at the home population.

457
00:31:49,578 --> 00:31:52,223
-The Creel Commission was the American variant of it.

458
00:31:52,367 --> 00:31:55,724
Woodrow Wilson came into office in 1916

459
00:31:55,875 --> 00:31:58,827
with the slogan 'Peace Without Victory'.

460
00:31:58,971 --> 00:32:02,251
He said that what we want is an end to World War I.

461
00:32:02,395 --> 00:32:04,613
Neither side deserves our support.

462
00:32:04,751 --> 00:32:06,994
And the population didn't want to enter the war.

463
00:32:07,138 --> 00:32:10,420
-In America, 1916 was an election year.

464
00:32:13,795 --> 00:32:16,350
The war was the dominant issue.

465
00:32:16,495 --> 00:32:20,681
The election campaigns of the parties crystallized the sway of opinion.

466
00:32:20,825 --> 00:32:24,416
Neutralism, the profound wish to stay out of the war

467
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:28,000
still possessed a doughty champion in the President.

468
00:32:28,340 --> 00:32:30,415
Support for Wilson's policy was strong

469
00:32:30,530 --> 00:32:32,999
in the Middle-West and Pacific states.

470
00:32:33,143 --> 00:32:38,373
Europe's war seemed more remote there than on the Atlantic seaboard.

471
00:32:39,018 --> 00:32:41,640
At the Democratic Convention, Wilson was renominated

472
00:32:41,784 --> 00:32:43,877
presidential candidate.

473
00:32:44,027 --> 00:32:46,252
The chairman opened his speech with a text

474
00:32:46,402 --> 00:32:48,600
from the Sermon on the Mount:

475
00:32:48,730 --> 00:32:50,716
-"Blessed are the peace-makers:

476
00:32:50,860 --> 00:32:54,750
for they shall be called the children of God."

477
00:32:54,900 --> 00:32:58,074
-Within a couple of months, Wilson was talking about

478
00:32:58,211 --> 00:33:00,124
'Victory Without Peace'

479
00:33:00,268 --> 00:33:04,967
and he had to somehow drive the population into accepting

480
00:33:05,124 --> 00:33:08,836
this sharp change in policy; the opposite of what they voted for

481
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:11,304
and that's where the Creel Commission came in.

482
00:33:11,473 --> 00:33:16,229
-George Creel described his work with unabashed enthusiasm.

483
00:33:16,694 --> 00:33:21,265
It was a plain publicity proposition. A vast enterprise in salesmanship.

484
00:33:21,409 --> 00:33:24,538
The world's greatest adventure in advertising.

485
00:33:25,937 --> 00:33:29,443
75,000 civil leaders, known as "Four Minute Men"

486
00:33:29,593 --> 00:33:32,853
were assembled to deliver pro-war messages to people in churches

487
00:33:33,003 --> 00:33:36,416
theaters and civic groups.

488
00:33:39,370 --> 00:33:42,426
Periodicals were sent to 600,000 teachers.

489
00:33:43,371 --> 00:33:46,000
Boy Scouts delivered copies of President Wilson's addresses

490
00:33:46,125 --> 00:33:48,830
to households across America.

491
00:33:48,985 --> 00:33:51,945
In was, in short, the largest wartime propaganda campaign

492
00:33:52,088 --> 00:33:53,975
in the history of the United States.

493
00:33:55,791 --> 00:33:59,261
Central to the committee's propaganda were two basic ideas:

494
00:33:59,404 --> 00:34:02,595
1: the American homeland was in imminent danger

495
00:34:02,739 --> 00:34:06,300
from a savage, bloodthirsty foe.

496
00:34:07,286 --> 00:34:10,460
And 2: it was the fate of the American nation

497
00:34:10,604 --> 00:34:12,495
in President Wilson's words

498
00:34:12,639 --> 00:34:16,331
to "make the world safe for democracy".

499
00:34:17,812 --> 00:34:21,132
The first thing was a time-honored tactic, long used in the United States

500
00:34:21,276 --> 00:34:23,935
and other countries, to vilify foreign enemies

501
00:34:24,086 --> 00:34:26,963
indigenous peoples, and slaves.

502
00:34:27,419 --> 00:34:31,613
During the Great War, the savage Indian and the sub-human Negro

503
00:34:31,763 --> 00:34:35,170
were transformed into the barbaric Hun.

504
00:35:06,419 --> 00:35:09,030
The caricature of the bloodthirsty Hun was bolstered

505
00:35:09,174 --> 00:35:13,315
by a series of fake news reports leaked by the new propaganda industry

506
00:35:13,457 --> 00:35:15,640
and disseminated to the public.

507
00:35:15,780 --> 00:35:19,544
Among them, that babies in Belgium had had their hands cut off

508
00:35:19,694 --> 00:35:23,952
were being impaled on bayonets and, in one case, nailed to a door.

509
00:35:26,633 --> 00:35:30,520
That a Canadian had been crucified by German soldiers

510
00:35:31,024 --> 00:35:33,627
and that dead bodies were being boiled down in so-called

511
00:35:33,765 --> 00:35:38,263
"corpse factories", to be used for ammunitions and pig food.

512
00:35:39,581 --> 00:35:42,500
In a foreshadowing of the "Freedom Fries" incident

513
00:35:42,642 --> 00:35:46,015
sauerkraut was renamed "Liberty cabbage".

514
00:35:47,698 --> 00:35:50,116
False atrocity stories would become a staple for nations

515
00:35:50,266 --> 00:35:52,785
in wartime throughout the 20th century.

516
00:35:52,935 --> 00:35:56,596
A recent example occurred prior to the First Gulf War.

517
00:35:56,759 --> 00:36:01,374
-While I was there I saw Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns.

518
00:36:01,655 --> 00:36:05,025
They took the babies out of the incubators...

519
00:36:06,956 --> 00:36:11,112
...took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor.

520
00:36:11,262 --> 00:36:14,951
-As it turns out, the massacre of babes never occurred.

521
00:36:15,139 --> 00:36:18,228
The young girl was actually a member of the Kuwaiti royal family

522
00:36:18,369 --> 00:36:21,581
and had been coached by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton

523
00:36:21,779 --> 00:36:23,969
to give persuasive false testimony.

524
00:36:24,119 --> 00:36:27,358
-Kids in incubators, and they were thrown out of the incubators

525
00:36:27,496 --> 00:36:31,618
so that Kuwait could be systematically dismantled.

526
00:36:38,112 --> 00:36:41,840
-The attempt to engender hatred against Germans in support of the war effort

527
00:36:41,990 --> 00:36:44,708
was highly successful. But there was another

528
00:36:44,859 --> 00:36:48,771
equally important aspect to the domestic propaganda campaign.

529
00:36:48,927 --> 00:36:53,780
If every adventure story needs a villain, it also needs a hero.

530
00:36:57,157 --> 00:37:01,659
"You should use your influence to keep your peaceful people from

531
00:37:01,660 --> 00:37:06,120
fighting the battles of a distant France or Belgium."

532
00:37:11,136 --> 00:37:14,535
"It is God who calls my sons, to save humanity."

533
00:37:14,535 --> 00:37:18,223
-Now this is a song I made about when they were drafting the men.

534
00:37:18,223 --> 00:37:21,500
Uncle Sam says he travel East and he travel the West.

535
00:37:21,500 --> 00:37:24,500
Uncle Sam says he believe he know the best.

536
00:37:24,500 --> 00:37:30,250
♪ Uncle Sam says, uncle Sam says

537
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:37,500
Uncle Sam says you gotta bottle up and go.

538
00:37:37,500 --> 00:37:38,988
I travel East and I travel the West...♪

539
00:37:38,988 --> 00:37:42,573
-Creel estimated that 72 million copies of 30 different booklets

540
00:37:42,710 --> 00:37:45,895
about American ideals were sent across the United States

541
00:37:46,026 --> 00:37:48,303
with millions more sent abroad.

542
00:37:48,454 --> 00:37:51,021
In addition to influencing the minds of Europeans

543
00:37:51,172 --> 00:37:53,827
the goal was to redefine for the home population

544
00:37:53,965 --> 00:37:57,097
the very concept of what it meant to be American.

545
00:37:57,253 --> 00:38:00,653
The new American would not interpret events, from what Creel called

546
00:38:00,796 --> 00:38:05,744
a class or sectional standpoint, but rather as a unified collective.

547
00:38:05,894 --> 00:38:11,206
In this manner, the people could be herded into "One white hot mass instinct."

548
00:38:14,941 --> 00:38:17,547
Previously, military action by the United States

549
00:38:17,697 --> 00:38:21,072
had been justified under the pretense of maintaining order

550
00:38:21,229 --> 00:38:25,927
protecting American interests, and bringing civilization to the savages.

551
00:38:26,094 --> 00:38:30,874
Now, the word "civilization" would transmute into "democracy".

552
00:38:30,874 --> 00:38:31,500
♪ Uncle Sam say you don't have to hesitate.

553
00:38:31,500 --> 00:38:37,000
Uncle Sam says you gotta bottle up and go.

554
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:39,000
?? numbers call 192

555
00:38:41,088 --> 00:38:44,803
-Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian communications theorist once said that:

556
00:38:44,941 --> 00:38:48,558
'If a fish could talk, and you could ask a fish

557
00:38:48,708 --> 00:38:50,928
"What's the most obvious element of your environment?"

558
00:38:51,078 --> 00:38:55,146
the last thing that the fish would say would be "water".

559
00:38:55,309 --> 00:38:58,725
That's the last thing the fish would notice and it's true about any culture.

560
00:38:58,869 --> 00:39:03,038
Those things that are most powerful and most obvious to an outsider

561
00:39:03,194 --> 00:39:05,684
don't get seen by the people swimming in that water.

562
00:39:05,828 --> 00:39:08,374
"America is God's chosen people."

563
00:39:08,518 --> 00:39:12,721
This goes back to as far as 1630 where John Winthrop on the Arabella,

564
00:39:12,865 --> 00:39:16,873
coming from England to the United States, said "We're a city on a hill."

565
00:39:17,029 --> 00:39:20,876
It's not an accident that in the campaign debates

566
00:39:21,026 --> 00:39:24,099
and stumps of the recent candidates

567
00:39:24,243 --> 00:39:28,069
you had Barack Obama actually saying that:

568
00:39:28,213 --> 00:39:31,316
"we are a city on a hill", as well as Sarah Palin.

569
00:39:31,466 --> 00:39:35,168
Ronald Reagan said it in his inaugural address.

570
00:39:35,344 --> 00:39:38,834
I've spoken of a shining city all my political life

571
00:39:38,991 --> 00:39:41,176
but I don't know if I ever quite communicated

572
00:39:41,326 --> 00:39:43,696
what I saw when I said it.

573
00:39:43,834 --> 00:39:46,637
But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city

574
00:39:46,787 --> 00:39:49,012
built on rocks stronger than oceans

575
00:39:49,155 --> 00:39:51,260
wind-swept, God-blessed

576
00:39:51,411 --> 00:39:55,417
and teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace."

577
00:39:55,567 --> 00:39:58,880
-We're a city on a hill, and so our mission is to democratize

578
00:39:59,023 --> 00:40:01,850
the rest of the world. We've got the best system possible

579
00:40:01,994 --> 00:40:05,504
and basically people ought to pay attention to us, 'cause we know.

580
00:40:10,851 --> 00:40:14,582
-The idea of a particular state cast as savior of the world

581
00:40:14,726 --> 00:40:17,730
would be taken to new heights in the United States

582
00:40:17,874 --> 00:40:20,130
but it wasn't an American invention.

583
00:40:20,273 --> 00:40:22,478
The "savior" motif was used as a justification

584
00:40:22,622 --> 00:40:26,300
for virtually every imperial intervention during the Colonial Era.

585
00:40:30,042 --> 00:40:34,009
French leaders spoke of a "civilizing mission" in their new colonies.

586
00:40:36,826 --> 00:40:41,713
British leaders spoke of bringing progress and civilized government to India.

587
00:40:41,857 --> 00:40:46,447
Imperial Japan spoke of unleashing an earthly paradise in Asia.

588
00:40:46,672 --> 00:40:50,514
While the Third Reich dreamt of a worldwide utopia.

589
00:40:54,883 --> 00:40:57,839
A decade before World War I, Mark Twain stated that:

590
00:40:57,964 --> 00:41:00,991
"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country

591
00:41:01,141 --> 00:41:04,270
not to its institutions or its office-holders."

592
00:41:04,439 --> 00:41:08,544
Decades later, George Orwell came to a similar conclusion, that:

593
00:41:08,688 --> 00:41:11,680
"Patriotism is a devotion to a certain place and people

594
00:41:11,824 --> 00:41:16,013
contrary to nationalism, which is inseparable from lust for power."

595
00:41:16,321 --> 00:41:19,713
This concept of patriotism remains elusive.

596
00:41:20,488 --> 00:41:24,411
-Once the war against Saddam begins, we expect every American

597
00:41:24,561 --> 00:41:27,941
to support our military, and if they can't do that, to shut up.

598
00:41:28,097 --> 00:41:30,772
-Equating super-patriotism with militarism:

599
00:41:30,922 --> 00:41:34,632
military endeavor, military achievements

600
00:41:34,788 --> 00:41:37,772
military struggles and victories; that's all supposedly

601
00:41:37,922 --> 00:41:40,957
a special manifestation of super-patriotism.

602
00:41:41,107 --> 00:41:45,340
And I argue that a real patriot wants something different for his country.

603
00:41:45,490 --> 00:41:49,787
He wants social justice. He wants peace and stability.

604
00:41:49,938 --> 00:41:54,114
He wants fairness. He wants an end to racism and sexism.

605
00:41:54,264 --> 00:41:59,265
He takes pride in his country's ability at social betterment

606
00:41:59,409 --> 00:42:01,899
rather than his country's ability

607
00:42:02,043 --> 00:42:05,501
to invade and knock around other countries.

608
00:42:05,645 --> 00:42:08,651
A real patriot feels an attachment to his country

609
00:42:08,795 --> 00:42:11,669
but not at the expense of other countries.

610
00:42:11,820 --> 00:42:15,048
He or she may feel a special attachment

611
00:42:15,204 --> 00:42:17,388
to the history of his own country.

612
00:42:17,531 --> 00:42:19,870
He values the accomplishments of his country

613
00:42:20,014 --> 00:42:23,571
like the abolition of slavery, the emergence of collective bargaining

614
00:42:23,723 --> 00:42:26,748
and the rights of working people for a better life

615
00:42:26,894 --> 00:42:30,153
the gains made by women

616
00:42:30,303 --> 00:42:33,631
in terms of being able to get into public life.

617
00:42:33,774 --> 00:42:37,955
These are the kind of things that the real patriot would value.

618
00:42:38,296 --> 00:42:42,245
In October 2001, George W. Bush signed into law

619
00:42:42,383 --> 00:42:44,576
what civil libertarians characterize

620
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:47,409
as an all-out assault against the Bill of Rights.

621
00:42:47,570 --> 00:42:50,281
It was called the Patriot Act.

622
00:42:50,431 --> 00:42:53,518
During the Great War, similar bills were passed.

623
00:42:53,668 --> 00:42:58,384
The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act, passed a year later

624
00:42:58,547 --> 00:43:01,227
authorized huge fines and lengthy prison terms for anyone

625
00:43:01,377 --> 00:43:04,439
who obstructed the military draft, or encouraged what was termed

626
00:43:04,570 --> 00:43:06,464
"disloyalty to the state".

627
00:43:06,608 --> 00:43:10,119
The sweeping legislation was quickly put into effect.

628
00:43:10,294 --> 00:43:13,230
And first on the list, were the "Wobblies".

629
00:43:13,427 --> 00:43:16,124
Shall we have this-

630
00:43:16,270 --> 00:43:21,786
Prosperity

631
00:43:21,935 --> 00:43:25,540
-Or shall it be this-

632
00:43:34,815 --> 00:43:39,353
Anarchy, Sedition, Lawlessness.

633
00:43:45,282 --> 00:43:50,631
-In many ways, the Wobblies were the most impressive example

634
00:43:50,781 --> 00:43:54,537
of a union movement in the history of the U.S. working class.

635
00:43:54,675 --> 00:43:57,730
'Wobblies' was the nickname for an organization called

636
00:43:57,874 --> 00:44:01,777
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),

637
00:44:01,927 --> 00:44:07,283
which flourished in the first decade and a half of the 20th century.

638
00:44:07,432 --> 00:44:12,082
The American Federation of Labor, which was the main craft union at the time

639
00:44:12,226 --> 00:44:16,101
refused to organize African-Americans, immigrants

640
00:44:16,258 --> 00:44:18,648
and women workers.

641
00:44:18,801 --> 00:44:21,524
So, that meant excluding the vast majority

642
00:44:21,656 --> 00:44:23,921
of the working class from the union movement.

643
00:44:24,077 --> 00:44:28,430
Along come the Wobblies, and they set out from the beginning

644
00:44:28,605 --> 00:44:32,052
specifically to organize immigrants

645
00:44:32,203 --> 00:44:35,950
women, African-Americans, alongside white workers

646
00:44:36,100 --> 00:44:38,433
in what they called 'one big union'.

647
00:44:38,577 --> 00:44:41,524
They led some of the most successful strikes.

648
00:44:41,668 --> 00:44:45,375
One of their strikes was the first sit-down strike at the time.

649
00:44:45,513 --> 00:44:48,112
Women workers played leadership roles

650
00:44:48,250 --> 00:44:51,807
something that was absolutely unheard of at the time.

651
00:44:51,951 --> 00:44:55,170
Their philosophy was a revolutionary philosophy.

652
00:44:55,307 --> 00:44:58,605
It's known as anarcho-syndicalism.

653
00:44:58,749 --> 00:45:02,980
-A federated, decentralized

654
00:45:04,528 --> 00:45:07,050
system of free associations

655
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,826
incorporating economic as well as social institutions

656
00:45:10,963 --> 00:45:14,162
would be what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism

657
00:45:14,312 --> 00:45:19,532
and it seems to me that it is the appropriate form of social organization

658
00:45:19,682 --> 00:45:23,077
for an advanced technological society in which human beings

659
00:45:23,214 --> 00:45:27,819
do not have to be forced into positions of tools; of cogs in a machine.

660
00:45:36,290 --> 00:45:39,607
-On September 5th, 1917, Federal agents

661
00:45:39,751 --> 00:45:42,405
raided offices of the Wobblies across the nation

662
00:45:42,555 --> 00:45:45,670
leading to arrests for the offense of causing insubordination

663
00:45:45,820 --> 00:45:50,313
disloyalty, and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces.

664
00:45:50,463 --> 00:45:53,148
101 of the defendants were found guilty

665
00:45:53,293 --> 00:45:56,862
and received prison sentences up to 20 years.

666
00:45:57,691 --> 00:46:03,605
-Wilson carried out a brutal internal repression called the Red Scare

667
00:46:03,756 --> 00:46:07,455
which was the worst in American history; far worse than McCarthy

668
00:46:07,599 --> 00:46:10,126
and far worse than anything that's going on now.

669
00:46:10,270 --> 00:46:14,233
They arrested thousands of people and smashed the labor movement.

670
00:46:14,377 --> 00:46:18,081
Heavy constraints on free expression, threw lots of people in jail

671
00:46:18,215 --> 00:46:21,487
expelled all sorts of people from the country.

672
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:28,412
-Yet, what had started as a hunt against radicals

673
00:46:28,556 --> 00:46:32,231
soon spread to every corner of American society.

674
00:46:32,387 --> 00:46:35,421
Patriots were encouraged to inform on friends and neighbors

675
00:46:35,571 --> 00:46:37,581
who spoke out against the war

676
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:41,093
while surveillance increased dramatically, not only by the military

677
00:46:41,237 --> 00:46:44,531
but by seemingly benign institutions, like the Postal system.

678
00:46:44,674 --> 00:46:47,159
-The state flourishes in time of war.

679
00:46:47,309 --> 00:46:49,679
The state grows stronger in time of war.

680
00:46:49,823 --> 00:46:53,742
The state accumulates power. The military is enhanced.

681
00:46:53,905 --> 00:46:57,228
The forces of repression are enhanced.

682
00:46:57,372 --> 00:47:02,039
War is an opportunity for the government to grow in power.

683
00:47:03,816 --> 00:47:06,695
-By the time the war ended, the total number of deaths

684
00:47:06,839 --> 00:47:10,028
had reached approximately 9.7 million soldiers

685
00:47:10,178 --> 00:47:12,587
with millions more suffering life-changing injuries

686
00:47:12,733 --> 00:47:15,490
and severe post-traumatic stress.

687
00:47:16,970 --> 00:47:20,083
To what end was not clear. The massive bloodshed

688
00:47:20,234 --> 00:47:23,215
had not made the world safe for freedom and democracy.

689
00:47:23,359 --> 00:47:25,942
What it had done, was produce enormous fortunes

690
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,310
for a handful of corporations and banks

691
00:47:28,454 --> 00:47:31,516
while leaving the worldwide labor movement in disarray.

692
00:47:31,659 --> 00:47:34,923
If the Great War had been a test of the Constitution

693
00:47:35,073 --> 00:47:39,325
and the concept of balancing the powers by each other, it failed.

694
00:47:39,469 --> 00:47:43,705
The United States Supreme Court established in Schenck vs. United States

695
00:47:43,855 --> 00:47:47,328
and Abrams vs. United States, that the Federal Government

696
00:47:47,478 --> 00:47:50,364
could suspend constitutional rights when the nation faced:

697
00:47:50,508 --> 00:47:53,564
"a clear and present danger".

698
00:47:53,712 --> 00:47:57,044
Randolph Bourne, speaking of the Great War as a whole

699
00:47:57,186 --> 00:48:00,780
responded preemptively with a now-famous dictum.

700
00:48:00,930 --> 00:48:05,219
"War", he said, "is the health of the state."

701
00:48:13,260 --> 00:48:17,548
III. We The People

702
00:48:18,872 --> 00:48:23,257
-The definition of polyarchy that we have in the social sciences

703
00:48:23,401 --> 00:48:26,895
is a system where the participation of masses of people is limited to

704
00:48:27,045 --> 00:48:29,630
voting among one or another representatives

705
00:48:29,780 --> 00:48:32,711
of the elite in periodic elections.

706
00:48:32,848 --> 00:48:35,692
And in between elections, the masses are now expected to keep quiet

707
00:48:35,829 --> 00:48:39,847
to go back to life as usual while the elite make the decisions and run the world

708
00:48:39,991 --> 00:48:44,765
until they can choose between one or another elite another four years later.

709
00:48:44,898 --> 00:48:49,946
So really, polyarchy is a system of elite rule

710
00:48:50,090 --> 00:48:52,711
and a system of elite rule which is a little more soft-core

711
00:48:52,855 --> 00:48:54,885
than the type of elite rule that we would see under

712
00:48:54,991 --> 00:48:57,519
a military dictatorship, for instance.

713
00:48:57,669 --> 00:48:59,508
But, what we see is that under a polyarchy

714
00:48:59,658 --> 00:49:02,384
the basic socioeconomic system does not change;

715
00:49:02,528 --> 00:49:06,322
it does not become democratized. Wealth is not redistributed downward.

716
00:49:06,466 --> 00:49:09,116
You don't see a more equitable redistribution of wealth and resources.

717
00:49:09,260 --> 00:49:12,635
So that's the key: socioeconomic dictatorship

718
00:49:12,789 --> 00:49:16,865
and free elections; that's the prescription for polyarchy.

719
00:49:17,028 --> 00:49:21,394
Participatory democracy would see not only more participation

720
00:49:21,544 --> 00:49:24,262
of people in the running of their daily affairs, but it would see

721
00:49:24,399 --> 00:49:28,003
a democratization of the economy; democratization of social relations.

722
00:49:28,141 --> 00:49:30,369
-In the 20th century

723
00:49:30,513 --> 00:49:33,924
you can't really talk openly about rule by the rich.

724
00:49:34,074 --> 00:49:37,699
That doesn't sound nice. The devices that have been developed

725
00:49:37,868 --> 00:49:42,590
propaganda devices, are ruled by the more competent:

726
00:49:42,734 --> 00:49:48,188
the technocratic elite, the responsible people, the educated sectors.

727
00:49:48,335 --> 00:49:52,401
There's a huge literature on this, but maybe the primary source

728
00:49:52,557 --> 00:49:55,467
for the 20th century is the leading public intellectual

729
00:49:55,617 --> 00:49:59,200
of the 20th century, in the United States, Walter Lippmann.

730
00:49:59,356 --> 00:50:01,814
Highly respected commentator on public affairs

731
00:50:01,964 --> 00:50:03,678
also a theorist of democracy.

732
00:50:03,811 --> 00:50:08,044
-During World War I, people who later emerged

733
00:50:08,184 --> 00:50:12,168
as sort of the "Founding Fathers" of modern communication research

734
00:50:12,314 --> 00:50:16,327
modern communication applications, mass media applications-

735
00:50:16,490 --> 00:50:20,131
quite a number of them had worked as propagandists during World War I

736
00:50:20,275 --> 00:50:23,118
often as relatively young people

737
00:50:23,262 --> 00:50:26,757
who were shaping their own ideas at the time.

738
00:50:26,907 --> 00:50:31,806
And one of them was Walter Lippmann. And Lippmann has emerged

739
00:50:32,544 --> 00:50:37,116
really to this day, as a leading intellectual light

740
00:50:37,258 --> 00:50:40,850
of a particular way of looking at society.

741
00:50:40,994 --> 00:50:44,998
-Today, Walter Lippmann is known as the "Dean of American journalism."

742
00:50:45,136 --> 00:50:48,070
Yet during the Great War, he had been chief leaflet writer

743
00:50:48,214 --> 00:50:50,910
and editor of a U.S. propaganda unit.

744
00:50:51,060 --> 00:50:53,582
He also served as Secretary of "The Inquiry"

745
00:50:53,725 --> 00:50:56,528
a quasi-intelligence agency.

746
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,557
Before dealing with Lippmann's contributions to political theory

747
00:51:00,700 --> 00:51:03,292
we first have to understand the forms of democracy

748
00:51:03,426 --> 00:51:06,656
that have characterized the United States and other Western nations

749
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:09,170
since the age of the great Revolutions.

750
00:51:09,314 --> 00:51:11,665
A leap forward from the age of monarchy

751
00:51:11,809 --> 00:51:15,018
the new nation-states would nevertheless preserve the concept

752
00:51:15,162 --> 00:51:18,889
that wealthy elites had the right to rule over the mass of the population.

753
00:51:19,039 --> 00:51:22,787
-Well, it's done me a sight of good, coming forward in time like this

754
00:51:22,944 --> 00:51:26,068
to see how wonderful things have turned out.

755
00:51:26,211 --> 00:51:28,895
But, I wish I could take you back with me

756
00:51:29,038 --> 00:51:32,173
back in time, back those 200 years

757
00:51:32,323 --> 00:51:35,062
when we were starting as a nation.

758
00:51:35,206 --> 00:51:38,587
I wish you could have seen this country then.

759
00:52:02,061 --> 00:52:04,495
-George Washington was a slave owner.

760
00:52:04,639 --> 00:52:07,654
James Madison was a slave owner.

761
00:52:07,792 --> 00:52:10,275
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner.

762
00:52:10,419 --> 00:52:13,801
Importantly, Jefferson, who was the most democratic of the lot

763
00:52:13,945 --> 00:52:16,231
wasn't at the Philadelphia Convention.

764
00:52:16,381 --> 00:52:18,568
He was Ambassador to France, and he picked up

765
00:52:18,712 --> 00:52:21,089
a lot of radical ideas from the French Revolution

766
00:52:21,221 --> 00:52:25,483
which didn't exactly endear him to people like Alexander Hamilton.

767
00:52:25,634 --> 00:52:29,413
The initial divide in American politics then

768
00:52:29,525 --> 00:52:31,502
goes back to those roots.

769
00:52:31,646 --> 00:52:36,172
It's Jeffersonian Democrats against Federalists

770
00:52:36,300 --> 00:52:39,086
the leader of whom, until he was killed by Burr

771
00:52:39,236 --> 00:52:41,450
was Alexander Hamilton.

772
00:52:41,600 --> 00:52:43,800
Essentially a class struggle, a class conflict.

773
00:52:43,931 --> 00:52:46,554
Thomas Jefferson was, in fact

774
00:52:46,704 --> 00:52:50,556
a fairly radical Democratic thinker in his time.

775
00:52:50,707 --> 00:52:53,369
And clearly, the Declaration's statement

776
00:52:53,507 --> 00:52:55,704
that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident

777
00:52:55,848 --> 00:52:58,756
that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator

778
00:52:58,906 --> 00:53:04,351
with certain inalienable rights', was a powerful Democratic statement.

779
00:53:05,312 --> 00:53:09,122
And, although Jefferson would not have applied it to women

780
00:53:09,260 --> 00:53:14,347
or the Indians or to Blacks, nonetheless, in all of those cases

781
00:53:14,497 --> 00:53:18,074
those words would come back to be very serviceable for those groups

782
00:53:18,218 --> 00:53:21,922
in pushing civil rights and civil liberties forward

783
00:53:22,066 --> 00:53:26,819
in the United States from where Jefferson's statement left them.

784
00:53:27,076 --> 00:53:29,412
The problem with the Declaration of Independence

785
00:53:29,556 --> 00:53:33,322
was that once independence was gotten from Britain

786
00:53:33,479 --> 00:53:35,682
then the question became one of governance:

787
00:53:35,820 --> 00:53:39,455
how would these former colonies of Britain be governed?

788
00:53:39,593 --> 00:53:44,526
Well, it led immediately to the Constitutional Convention in 1787

789
00:53:44,676 --> 00:53:49,252
where a series of uprisings by debtors, essentially

790
00:53:49,408 --> 00:53:52,029
not just in Massachusetts the most famous is, of course

791
00:53:52,167 --> 00:53:54,842
the Shays' Rebellion in 1786.

792
00:53:54,992 --> 00:53:58,427
-The American state was founded, largely to get the Ohio Valley

793
00:53:58,583 --> 00:54:01,290
largely to cross the Appalachians

794
00:54:01,433 --> 00:54:03,761
the American, that is the Constitution

795
00:54:03,898 --> 00:54:06,148
to organize an army and money

796
00:54:06,298 --> 00:54:09,482
in order to conquer further lands more to the West.

797
00:54:09,626 --> 00:54:11,511
That's the origin of the U.S.A.

798
00:54:11,649 --> 00:54:14,990
But to do that, the slave-masters are not going to do the fighting

799
00:54:15,140 --> 00:54:18,303
what they will do is hire poor people to do it.

800
00:54:18,447 --> 00:54:21,775
But when they don't pay the poor people, as they didn't pay Daniel Shays

801
00:54:21,912 --> 00:54:25,835
Daniel Shays takes matters into his own hands in 1787

802
00:54:25,985 --> 00:54:28,185
and goes to the courts and shuts down the courts

803
00:54:28,325 --> 00:54:31,442
because the courts were beginning to foreclose

804
00:54:31,592 --> 00:54:34,624
on the grounds that Daniel Shays and the other veterans

805
00:54:34,774 --> 00:54:38,078
from the American War of Independence did not have the money to pay back.

806
00:54:38,203 --> 00:54:41,656
-Debtor riots were happening throughout the 1780's

807
00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:44,655
and they were sufficiently scary from the point of view

808
00:54:44,799 --> 00:54:48,665
of people with property, that they had to do something about it.

809
00:54:48,800 --> 00:54:51,127
And what they did about it was, essentially

810
00:54:51,260 --> 00:54:53,951
overthrow the Articles of Confederation

811
00:54:54,101 --> 00:54:57,495
and instill a much stronger

812
00:54:57,642 --> 00:55:02,244
much more able government to protect the property interests

813
00:55:02,406 --> 00:55:07,042
that were in dire threat from the 'people'.

814
00:55:07,192 --> 00:55:10,763
This was an elitist you could almost say coup d'état

815
00:55:10,907 --> 00:55:13,291
except there wasn't any strong central government

816
00:55:13,429 --> 00:55:15,564
to launch a coup against.

817
00:55:15,714 --> 00:55:17,890
They were really trying to set one up

818
00:55:18,034 --> 00:55:21,374
and protect it against a majoritarian interest

819
00:55:21,518 --> 00:55:24,972
especially economic interest, especially property interest

820
00:55:25,123 --> 00:55:29,278
especially threats from people who didn't have much.

821
00:55:29,434 --> 00:55:31,571
First thing they did when they got to Philadelphia

822
00:55:31,721 --> 00:55:34,267
in 1787 was they locked the doors.

823
00:55:34,398 --> 00:55:38,698
And the only reason we know what happened behind those closed doors

824
00:55:38,849 --> 00:55:42,305
were that people like James Madison kept extensive notes.

825
00:55:42,449 --> 00:55:46,777
-The American Constitution was formulated primarily by James Madison.

826
00:55:46,921 --> 00:55:51,834
He's the major framer of the Constitution and he wanted to overcome

827
00:55:51,977 --> 00:55:53,999
what he called the tyranny of the majority.

828
00:55:54,143 --> 00:55:56,872
He said the primary goal of government

829
00:55:57,022 --> 00:55:59,624
is to ensure that the opulent

830
00:55:59,774 --> 00:56:02,526
are protected from the majority.

831
00:56:02,670 --> 00:56:06,789
So therefore, he designed the Constitution in such a way that

832
00:56:06,927 --> 00:56:12,282
as he put it, the 'wealth of the nation' will be in charge.

833
00:56:13,007 --> 00:56:16,618
The more responsible set of men; those who sympathize

834
00:56:16,762 --> 00:56:19,126
with property owners and their rights.

835
00:56:19,270 --> 00:56:22,546
And the system was designed that way. That power was in the Senate

836
00:56:22,690 --> 00:56:26,105
which was the least representative body

837
00:56:26,249 --> 00:56:29,406
and it was the 'wealth of the nation' and in fact, it still is.

838
00:56:29,556 --> 00:56:33,496
The House of Representatives, which is more democratic in theory

839
00:56:33,646 --> 00:56:36,024
was given much less power.

840
00:56:36,168 --> 00:56:38,532
And the powerful executive is also supposed

841
00:56:38,679 --> 00:56:40,985
to represent the 'wealth of the nation'.

842
00:56:41,143 --> 00:56:44,304
In Madison's defense, one should say

843
00:56:44,454 --> 00:56:48,836
that he was really pre-capitalist in his mentality.

844
00:56:49,261 --> 00:56:52,992
He assumed that the wealthy would be

845
00:56:53,136 --> 00:56:55,889
what he called benevolent gentlemen

846
00:56:56,023 --> 00:56:58,612
who would not be concerned with their own interests

847
00:56:58,756 --> 00:57:01,941
but with the benefit of the people.

848
00:57:02,085 --> 00:57:06,878
Adam Smith, who preceded him, was much more realistic.

849
00:57:07,265 --> 00:57:11,135
He pointed out that the principal architects of policy

850
00:57:11,286 --> 00:57:14,363
namely the merchants and manufacturers in his day

851
00:57:14,513 --> 00:57:17,185
they ensure that policies are designed

852
00:57:17,329 --> 00:57:19,763
so that their own interests are protected

853
00:57:19,900 --> 00:57:22,496
no matter how grievous

854
00:57:22,642 --> 00:57:25,261
the effect on others, including the people of England.

855
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:29,130
It's rather interesting to compare

856
00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:32,259
Madison's thinking which founded this country

857
00:57:32,402 --> 00:57:35,472
with the first major book on politics

858
00:57:35,603 --> 00:57:37,768
namely Aristotle's Politics.

859
00:57:37,912 --> 00:57:41,131
Aristotle surveyed many kinds of systems

860
00:57:41,275 --> 00:57:44,270
and decided that, of all of them, he didn't like any of them

861
00:57:44,426 --> 00:57:47,501
but he said of all of them, democracy is probably the best.

862
00:57:47,670 --> 00:57:50,258
But he said that democracy has a problem

863
00:57:50,414 --> 00:57:54,844
and it was the same problem that Madison noticed centuries later.

864
00:57:54,982 --> 00:57:57,953
He said, if in Athens everyone had a right to vote

865
00:57:58,104 --> 00:58:01,604
the poor majority would attack the property of the rich

866
00:58:01,742 --> 00:58:05,430
insist that it would be divided, and he also felt that was unfair.

867
00:58:05,599 --> 00:58:09,678
But Madison and Aristotle had opposite solutions.

868
00:58:09,822 --> 00:58:13,041
Madison's solution was to restrict democracy.

869
00:58:13,191 --> 00:58:17,367
Aristotle's solution was to restrict inequality.

870
00:58:17,518 --> 00:58:20,383
-Opponents of the new government were called Anti-Federalists

871
00:58:20,526 --> 00:58:22,447
though the term is inaccurate.

872
00:58:22,591 --> 00:58:25,134
The majority favored some form of federation

873
00:58:25,284 --> 00:58:27,415
but insisted on more localized control

874
00:58:27,559 --> 00:58:30,884
with a more participatory democratic system.

875
00:58:31,028 --> 00:58:34,675
-The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution

876
00:58:34,838 --> 00:58:38,126
they were the price the Federalists had to pay

877
00:58:38,270 --> 00:58:42,848
in the ratifying conventions to pass the document.

878
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:47,882
So, the democratic element of the Constitution

879
00:58:48,032 --> 00:58:51,941
which, of course, is the Bill of Rights, was forced down their throats.

880
00:58:52,085 --> 00:58:54,163
It didn't come out of Philadelphia at all.

881
00:58:54,301 --> 00:58:57,877
It was appended in 1791

882
00:58:58,595 --> 00:59:01,584
and forced down the Constitution

883
00:59:01,728 --> 00:59:05,594
by the more democratic elements in the society.

884
00:59:05,803 --> 00:59:09,126
Even with the Bill of Rights, we have a system

885
00:59:09,277 --> 00:59:13,114
which is hardly perfect from the point of view of civil rights

886
00:59:13,258 --> 00:59:16,070
and civil liberties, let's put it mildly.

887
00:59:16,220 --> 00:59:18,677
It trampled all over with the rights of citizens.

888
00:59:18,821 --> 00:59:22,696
So the Bill of Rights is hardly an ironclad set of guarantees

889
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:25,591
for civil rights and civil liberties in the United States.

890
00:59:25,741 --> 00:59:29,332
I hate to think of the United States without it. The Anti-Federalists

891
00:59:29,476 --> 00:59:32,703
were significantly more partial

892
00:59:32,847 --> 00:59:37,124
to democratic elements in the society

893
00:59:37,274 --> 00:59:40,351
and to the rights of ordinary people

894
00:59:40,514 --> 00:59:44,651
than were the significantly more elitist Federalists.

895
00:59:44,851 --> 00:59:48,161
-If the greatest legacy of the Anti-Federalists was the Bill of Rights

896
00:59:48,311 --> 00:59:51,233
their dream of direct democracy was not to be.

897
00:59:51,389 --> 00:59:54,669
At the time, many dissidents made predictions for what they believed

898
00:59:54,813 --> 00:59:59,501
would come to pass as the new nation grew and flourished.

899
00:59:59,665 --> 01:00:02,935
"The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few"

900
01:00:03,079 --> 01:00:05,505
one Anti-Federalist wrote.

901
01:00:05,748 --> 01:00:07,988
Another objected to the new government because

902
01:00:08,119 --> 01:00:10,625
"The bulk of the people can have nothing to say to it;

903
01:00:10,775 --> 01:00:13,900
the government is not a government of the people.

904
01:00:14,762 --> 01:00:18,400
The men of fortune would not feel for the common people.

905
01:00:19,557 --> 01:00:21,902
An aristocratical tyranny would arise

906
01:00:22,049 --> 01:00:25,289
in which the great will struggle for power, honor and wealth.

907
01:00:25,451 --> 01:00:29,800
The poor become a prey to avarice, insolence and oppression.

908
01:00:33,084 --> 01:00:36,113
In short, my fellow citizens, it can be said to be nothing less

909
01:00:36,257 --> 01:00:39,268
than a nasty stride to universal empire."

910
01:00:43,785 --> 01:00:47,787
A significant model for both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists

911
01:00:47,938 --> 01:00:50,777
were the Iroquois, who had created a highly sophisticated

912
01:00:50,921 --> 01:00:54,757
and democratic federation of self-governing units.

913
01:00:54,926 --> 01:00:57,983
In stark contrast to European forms of government

914
01:00:58,139 --> 01:01:02,354
the Iroquois people had the ability to immediately remove corrupt leaders

915
01:01:02,498 --> 01:01:05,402
women played a significant role in decision-making

916
01:01:05,546 --> 01:01:10,200
everyone was permitted to participate in debate and policy formulation.

917
01:01:12,763 --> 01:01:17,132
-Native Americans were exceedingly democratic in the way they operated.

918
01:01:17,276 --> 01:01:20,055
No society is perfect but when you make comparisons

919
01:01:20,193 --> 01:01:22,705
you see that they were sometimes small

920
01:01:22,849 --> 01:01:25,889
but sometimes 30-40 thousand people and more

921
01:01:26,030 --> 01:01:28,479
in a large confederacy

922
01:01:28,636 --> 01:01:32,948
that operated on a basis of mutual respect.

923
01:01:33,430 --> 01:01:35,995
Mutual respect that developed out of experience

924
01:01:36,135 --> 01:01:39,264
because if you didn't treat people equally

925
01:01:39,404 --> 01:01:41,814
then they were going to give you trouble.

926
01:01:41,958 --> 01:01:44,274
Societies were exceedingly collaborative

927
01:01:44,418 --> 01:01:47,402
but they were also exceedingly individualist.

928
01:01:47,546 --> 01:01:51,290
The individual was honored, but the values

929
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:54,225
were collaborative because you had to get along.

930
01:01:54,369 --> 01:01:58,447
Everybody was included in every decision that affected them.

931
01:01:58,603 --> 01:02:01,542
Elders, obviously, were honored. They knew more.

932
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:04,772
You listen to your elders. But, everybody had a say.

933
01:02:04,909 --> 01:02:07,685
You had an extremely participatory society

934
01:02:07,825 --> 01:02:10,918
and as it moved up to larger, there was a great deal of decentralization.

935
01:02:11,062 --> 01:02:14,250
So if you had a large number of people

936
01:02:14,399 --> 01:02:18,703
and they would be in a federation, the village would decide for itself

937
01:02:18,854 --> 01:02:21,170
the tribe would then decide.

938
01:02:21,314 --> 01:02:24,102
But the individual villages would have to decide

939
01:02:24,246 --> 01:02:28,170
then the tribes in the federation, their representatives would meet.

940
01:02:28,315 --> 01:02:30,794
But they wouldn't decide for everyone

941
01:02:30,935 --> 01:02:33,381
they'd have to have the consensus of all the people.

942
01:02:33,519 --> 01:02:35,520
So if there wasn't consensus already

943
01:02:35,658 --> 01:02:38,044
they would have to go back and discuss it.

944
01:02:38,194 --> 01:02:41,308
So that, to the extent that there was representation

945
01:02:41,450 --> 01:02:45,342
these were representatives who were truly representative.

946
01:02:45,473 --> 01:02:47,384
They would have to go back

947
01:02:47,532 --> 01:02:50,973
they wouldn't keep their positions unless they consulted people.

948
01:02:51,136 --> 01:02:54,932
And they knew that. Even if they had the authority to make a decision

949
01:02:55,082 --> 01:02:57,677
people would go elsewhere and not keep them as leaders

950
01:02:57,815 --> 01:03:01,121
if they didn't listen to them and they didn't treat them well.

951
01:03:01,265 --> 01:03:05,557
By and large you had a much more participatory society

952
01:03:05,701 --> 01:03:09,072
and even on the larger more representative level

953
01:03:09,216 --> 01:03:13,328
the representatives really had to listen to their constituents.

954
01:03:14,120 --> 01:03:17,874
-Ironically referred to as primitive and savage, Native Americans

955
01:03:18,030 --> 01:03:21,303
had actually created a far more democratic system of self-governance

956
01:03:21,453 --> 01:03:24,669
than any civilized nation in history.

957
01:03:25,870 --> 01:03:29,663
But their anarchic models, as well as the more limited democratic systems

958
01:03:29,813 --> 01:03:31,656
proposed by the Anti-Federalists

959
01:03:31,806 --> 01:03:35,500
were incompatible with Madison's elitist vision.

960
01:03:36,549 --> 01:03:39,592
In republic and parliamentary democracy alike

961
01:03:39,735 --> 01:03:42,468
citizens would be reduced to passive observers.

962
01:03:42,612 --> 01:03:44,745
They would be allowed to pick and choose which individual

963
01:03:44,883 --> 01:03:47,938
made decisions on their behalf

964
01:03:48,076 --> 01:03:51,964
but they would not be able to make those decisions themselves.

965
01:03:52,108 --> 01:03:54,494
Returning to the period after the first World War

966
01:03:54,638 --> 01:03:57,003
we find widespread support amongst intellectuals

967
01:03:57,147 --> 01:04:00,738
for Madison's elitist interpretation of democracy.

968
01:04:01,452 --> 01:04:04,624
According to Walter Lippmann, the public's function in politics

969
01:04:04,768 --> 01:04:09,381
was to be interested spectators of action, but not participants.

970
01:04:11,462 --> 01:04:13,509
Yet Lippmann perceived a problem.

971
01:04:13,653 --> 01:04:16,554
New technologies in communication and transportation

972
01:04:16,698 --> 01:04:18,967
had awakened millions of disenfranchised people

973
01:04:19,105 --> 01:04:21,917
to a new world outside their towns and cities

974
01:04:22,061 --> 01:04:24,196
while traditional economic, political

975
01:04:24,340 --> 01:04:26,947
and social structures remained in place.

976
01:04:27,091 --> 01:04:29,323
Something had to change.

977
01:04:29,473 --> 01:04:33,197
But rather than advocate structural changes in society's institutions

978
01:04:33,347 --> 01:04:37,645
Lippmann suggested that propaganda re-adjust the public mind.

979
01:04:37,789 --> 01:04:41,677
-In his essays on democracy in the 1920s

980
01:04:41,827 --> 01:04:44,827
which are incidentally called 'progressive' essays on democracy

981
01:04:44,971 --> 01:04:50,032
he was a Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal in the American sense.

982
01:04:50,182 --> 01:04:55,004
He says that the majority are simply incompetent

983
01:04:55,154 --> 01:04:59,477
they are ignorant and meddlesome outsiders in his view

984
01:04:59,614 --> 01:05:03,551
that's the majority of the population, and to allow them to participate

985
01:05:03,707 --> 01:05:06,647
in the decision making would be a complete disaster.

986
01:05:06,791 --> 01:05:09,407
So therefore we have to design means

987
01:05:09,548 --> 01:05:13,415
to insure that what he called the responsible men

988
01:05:14,046 --> 01:05:16,643
of whom he was of course one, are protected

989
01:05:16,790 --> 01:05:21,839
from the roar and the trampling of the beasts

990
01:05:22,015 --> 01:05:24,486
the ignorant majority.

991
01:05:30,837 --> 01:05:32,604
(Scream)

992
01:05:32,742 --> 01:05:35,200
And he devised a number of methods;

993
01:05:35,344 --> 01:05:37,997
Lippmann called it the 'manufacture of consent'.

994
01:05:38,134 --> 01:05:41,332
We have to manufacture the consent of the ignorant

995
01:05:41,470 --> 01:05:44,436
and meddlesome outsiders, the mass of the population.

996
01:05:44,589 --> 01:05:48,202
And the huge public relations industry was developed at the same time.

997
01:05:48,346 --> 01:05:51,284
They're the people who manage

998
01:05:51,431 --> 01:05:54,426
and control the marketing exercises

999
01:05:54,576 --> 01:05:56,883
that are called elections in the United States.

1000
01:05:57,027 --> 01:06:00,019
They are marketing exercises, and they're well aware of it.

1001
01:06:00,157 --> 01:06:02,477
-Apparently we have all been wrong

1002
01:06:02,615 --> 01:06:05,393
it is pronounced "Kal - ee - forn - ya."

1003
01:06:05,550 --> 01:06:08,885
Ladies and Gentlemen! The governor of the great state of California

1004
01:06:09,035 --> 01:06:13,219
Arnold Schwarzenegger!

1005
01:06:17,281 --> 01:06:19,974
-So for example, for the last election, 2008

1006
01:06:20,122 --> 01:06:22,514
the advertising industry gives a prize every year

1007
01:06:22,652 --> 01:06:25,026
for the best marketing campaign of the year.

1008
01:06:25,176 --> 01:06:27,774
2008 they gave it to the Obama campaign

1009
01:06:27,918 --> 01:06:30,103
who beat out commercial competitors.

1010
01:06:30,241 --> 01:06:34,653
The idea is: We market candidates the same way we market toothpaste

1011
01:06:34,797 --> 01:06:37,643
or lifestyle drugs or automobiles.

1012
01:06:37,781 --> 01:06:39,856
Of course it helps to have a lot of money.

1013
01:06:40,000 --> 01:06:44,407
And in fact Obama greatly outspent McCain.

1014
01:06:44,551 --> 01:06:46,472
And not because of popular contributions.

1015
01:06:46,616 --> 01:06:50,210
They came mostly from financial industries. He was their candidate.

1016
01:06:50,354 --> 01:06:55,070
And his policies will presumably respond to his constituents.

1017
01:07:00,932 --> 01:07:03,879
-Prominent intellectuals continue to argue that the world's complexity

1018
01:07:04,029 --> 01:07:06,206
makes democracy impossible.

1019
01:07:06,357 --> 01:07:08,840
A recent cover story in Time Magazine claimed that

1020
01:07:08,984 --> 01:07:12,734
"Democracy is in the worst interest of national goals.

1021
01:07:12,878 --> 01:07:16,320
The modern world is too complex to allow the man or woman in the street

1022
01:07:16,464 --> 01:07:19,072
to interfere in its management."

1023
01:07:20,071 --> 01:07:23,205
A man who surely would have agreed was Edward Bernays.

1024
01:07:23,355 --> 01:07:27,235
Like Lippmann, Bernays served as a propagandist on the Creel Committee.

1025
01:07:27,385 --> 01:07:30,485
And like Lippmann, he went on to re-fashion wartime propaganda

1026
01:07:30,623 --> 01:07:33,360
for peacetime aims.

1027
01:07:35,984 --> 01:07:39,606
In his classic text "Propaganda" Bernays suggested that elites

1028
01:07:39,750 --> 01:07:42,347
"regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army

1029
01:07:42,491 --> 01:07:45,173
regiments their bodies."

1030
01:07:45,342 --> 01:07:48,357
Bernays considered mass mind control so crucial

1031
01:07:48,507 --> 01:07:50,531
that it constituted, in his words

1032
01:07:50,664 --> 01:07:53,674
"the very essence of the democratic process."

1033
01:07:55,041 --> 01:07:57,792
Bernays' opportunity to shine arose when a crisis threatened

1034
01:07:57,936 --> 01:08:00,367
not only the profits of major corporations

1035
01:08:00,514 --> 01:08:02,854
but the entire capitalist system.

1036
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:06,003
The solution, as theorized by business leaders

1037
01:08:06,147 --> 01:08:09,423
would lead to social breakdown, environmental catastrophe

1038
01:08:09,567 --> 01:08:13,616
and further alienation between the American people and their government.

1039
01:08:13,766 --> 01:08:17,865
It would also lead to wealth, on a scale never before imagined.

1040
01:08:22,792 --> 01:08:28,175
IV. Consumers

1041
01:08:28,841 --> 01:08:32,013
-The major story that advertising tells us about human happiness

1042
01:08:32,157 --> 01:08:36,478
is that, the way for happiness is through the consumption of things.

1043
01:08:36,622 --> 01:08:40,080
That in fact buying of something in the marketplace will make you happy.

1044
01:08:40,224 --> 01:08:42,457
In fact that's the message of almost every single ad.

1045
01:08:42,607 --> 01:08:45,993
And that's not often you can say that there's one message that is in

1046
01:08:46,137 --> 01:08:49,214
the literally millions of ads that are produced every year.

1047
01:08:49,358 --> 01:08:52,938
I think that is the message of advertising as a whole

1048
01:08:53,096 --> 01:08:55,260
is that it's better to buy than not to buy.

1049
01:08:55,410 --> 01:08:57,723
That in fact the way to become... and that you will be happier

1050
01:08:57,867 --> 01:09:00,471
as a result of buying than not buying.

1051
01:09:00,615 --> 01:09:04,439
And I think that idea in fact is the major force

1052
01:09:04,583 --> 01:09:09,187
for global social change, over the last 50 years.

1053
01:09:16,299 --> 01:09:20,485
-In the 1920s, business leaders were faced with a dilemma.

1054
01:09:20,629 --> 01:09:23,864
Over-production of goods had exceeded demand.

1055
01:09:24,014 --> 01:09:27,130
Production between 1860 and 1920

1056
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:29,586
had increased by 12 to 14 times,

1057
01:09:29,730 --> 01:09:33,740
while the population only increased by a factor of 3.

1058
01:09:40,797 --> 01:09:43,056
There were several ways of solving the problem.

1059
01:09:43,194 --> 01:09:45,816
One was to reduce working hours and raise wages

1060
01:09:45,947 --> 01:09:49,555
so that production and consumption reach an equilibrium.

1061
01:09:50,561 --> 01:09:52,603
This would have lead to more leisure time for workers

1062
01:09:52,751 --> 01:09:55,654
and a higher standard of living.

1063
01:09:56,053 --> 01:09:58,431
The problem with this solution is that it could have entailed

1064
01:09:58,581 --> 01:10:00,352
a slight decrease in profits.

1065
01:10:00,502 --> 01:10:03,243
Corporations are mandated by law to maximize profits

1066
01:10:03,387 --> 01:10:06,108
on behalf of their shareholders regardless of social

1067
01:10:06,246 --> 01:10:08,964
or environmental costs.

1068
01:10:11,817 --> 01:10:14,895
According to business leaders, there was another problem.

1069
01:10:15,039 --> 01:10:18,673
John Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers

1070
01:10:18,817 --> 01:10:21,648
warned that a shorter work week would undermine the work ethic

1071
01:10:21,792 --> 01:10:24,970
and potentially ferment radicalism.

1072
01:10:25,121 --> 01:10:28,043
If people had time to stop and think, they might also take the time

1073
01:10:28,193 --> 01:10:30,459
to re-think their position in life.

1074
01:10:30,609 --> 01:10:34,034
"The emphasis should be put on work." Edgerton stated.

1075
01:10:34,178 --> 01:10:37,554
"More work and better work, instead of upon leisure."

1076
01:10:37,697 --> 01:10:39,495
It seems a harmless enough statement.

1077
01:10:39,638 --> 01:10:43,960
But what businessmen were advocating was revolutionary.

1078
01:10:44,304 --> 01:10:47,238
Production would no longer be about satisfying human needs.

1079
01:10:47,382 --> 01:10:50,539
It would be an end, in and of itself.

1080
01:10:50,683 --> 01:10:52,901
Rather than a democracy of ideas

1081
01:10:53,044 --> 01:10:55,402
or a democracy of mass participation

1082
01:10:55,546 --> 01:10:58,968
the United States would become a democracy of material goods.

1083
01:10:59,112 --> 01:11:02,628
The citizen would be replaced by the consumer.

1084
01:11:03,253 --> 01:11:06,325
- Look at those goods piled up over there.

1085
01:11:06,475 --> 01:11:09,731
I'm worried. Here we are, we've got the new machines

1086
01:11:09,873 --> 01:11:12,281
and they're doing even better than we expected.

1087
01:11:12,419 --> 01:11:15,344
They've not only cut production costs

1088
01:11:15,492 --> 01:11:17,913
but they've increased output over 50%!

1089
01:11:18,064 --> 01:11:20,468
But we're not selling this additional product.

1090
01:11:20,606 --> 01:11:25,000
Inventories are piling up. Now what are we going to do about it?"

1091
01:11:25,143 --> 01:11:28,350
- It seems to me we've got to change our plan completely.

1092
01:11:28,506 --> 01:11:32,051
Now that we're increasing production, we've got to put on more pressure

1093
01:11:32,201 --> 01:11:34,509
work the territory more intensively.

1094
01:11:34,653 --> 01:11:38,251
- You mean more advertising? - Yes.

1095
01:11:38,394 --> 01:11:40,891
The problem of capitalism is the problem of consumption.

1096
01:11:41,035 --> 01:11:44,487
And the problem is that after your basic needs have been met

1097
01:11:44,638 --> 01:11:46,883
there is no real need for consumption.

1098
01:11:47,021 --> 01:11:49,698
And so you have to convince people that in fact their identities

1099
01:11:49,836 --> 01:11:52,206
are based upon the consumption of objects

1100
01:11:52,350 --> 01:11:54,919
for which there is no material need.

1101
01:11:55,063 --> 01:11:57,582
That's the problem that comes from the expansion of the market.

1102
01:11:57,720 --> 01:12:00,223
If you look at advertising it's a very interesting history.

1103
01:12:00,367 --> 01:12:03,183
In the first period of advertising, we can say right up

1104
01:12:03,333 --> 01:12:05,337
until about the 1920s

1105
01:12:05,475 --> 01:12:08,244
advertising talked about the goods themselves.

1106
01:12:08,382 --> 01:12:10,920
They talked about how they were made, what they did

1107
01:12:11,064 --> 01:12:12,891
how well they lasted, etc.

1108
01:12:13,035 --> 01:12:16,988
It really is, at this course, about objects. About what goods did.

1109
01:12:17,138 --> 01:12:21,271
Now starting around 1920, that changes. And from that period on

1110
01:12:21,414 --> 01:12:23,951
advertising doesn't really talk about goods themselves

1111
01:12:24,095 --> 01:12:28,100
they talk about the relationship of goods to our needs.

1112
01:12:29,887 --> 01:12:33,509
-At the center of the new strategy was Edward Bernays.

1113
01:12:34,605 --> 01:12:36,341
If Walter Lippmann had concerned himself

1114
01:12:36,488 --> 01:12:39,839
with an overarching analysis of mass media in democracy

1115
01:12:39,982 --> 01:12:42,758
Bernays would devote most of his energies to propaganda

1116
01:12:42,896 --> 01:12:44,666
on behalf of the corporation.

1117
01:12:44,810 --> 01:12:48,865
His uncle, Sigmund Freud, would serve as his muse.

1118
01:12:49,096 --> 01:12:52,238
Rather than focus on the intrinsic worth of a particular product

1119
01:12:52,376 --> 01:12:54,182
Bernays suggested a strategy

1120
01:12:54,336 --> 01:12:57,717
where products became linked with the unconscious desires of the public.

1121
01:12:57,865 --> 01:13:00,497
In this manner there would be virtually no limits

1122
01:13:00,641 --> 01:13:02,978
to either production or consumption.

1123
01:13:03,122 --> 01:13:07,197
-Freud's nephew was a man by the name of Bernays, and he's regarded as

1124
01:13:07,341 --> 01:13:11,757
the father of modern public relations, particularly in the United States.

1125
01:13:11,901 --> 01:13:15,133
His contribution, if you want to call it that

1126
01:13:15,270 --> 01:13:18,653
was to take propaganda techniques that had been developed

1127
01:13:18,803 --> 01:13:22,091
for military, psychological warfare

1128
01:13:22,222 --> 01:13:24,511
national security type issues

1129
01:13:24,656 --> 01:13:29,898
during World War I, and apply them in a systematic way to commercial issues.

1130
01:13:30,048 --> 01:13:33,878
One of his best known efforts had to do with

1131
01:13:34,022 --> 01:13:36,616
encouraging females, women, to smoke.

1132
01:13:36,766 --> 01:13:40,016
He would stage beauty pageants, he would stage

1133
01:13:40,166 --> 01:13:43,520
what would today be called photo-ops and that sort of thing

1134
01:13:43,664 --> 01:13:47,638
in which smoking, by women

1135
01:13:47,781 --> 01:13:50,785
was portrayed as women's liberation

1136
01:13:50,928 --> 01:13:55,163
was portrayed as a way to be free and empowered

1137
01:13:55,313 --> 01:13:57,687
is getting addicted to nicotine.

1138
01:13:57,824 --> 01:14:02,027
The audience, the market, in Bernays' mind

1139
01:14:02,171 --> 01:14:06,763
had a clear desire to be free

1140
01:14:06,911 --> 01:14:09,372
to be stronger, to be more self-empowered.

1141
01:14:09,523 --> 01:14:11,706
So women clearly wanted these things

1142
01:14:11,837 --> 01:14:14,284
along comes Bernays and the tobacco industry

1143
01:14:14,428 --> 01:14:17,137
and says "Here is how to have it."

1144
01:14:45,377 --> 01:14:48,748
-Goods don't make us very happy. Goods are not central to satisfaction.

1145
01:14:48,892 --> 01:14:52,323
What actually really makes people happy are non-material things.

1146
01:14:52,473 --> 01:14:56,923
What makes people happy, seems to be, things connected with sociability.

1147
01:14:57,061 --> 01:14:59,947
I don't mean to say by that material things have nothing to do with happiness.

1148
01:15:00,091 --> 01:15:03,540
Poor people are not happy. They don't have access to clean drinking water

1149
01:15:03,678 --> 01:15:06,390
they don't have access to food, they don't have access to shelter.

1150
01:15:06,534 --> 01:15:09,099
So it's not that material things are not connected to happiness

1151
01:15:09,249 --> 01:15:11,058
they are to some degree

1152
01:15:11,214 --> 01:15:13,647
but, once you get past a certain level of comfort

1153
01:15:13,791 --> 01:15:16,077
material things simply don't provide us happiness.

1154
01:15:16,202 --> 01:15:20,178
At the same time there is this giant propaganda system of advertising

1155
01:15:20,328 --> 01:15:23,153
that is again perpetually telling us that the way to happiness

1156
01:15:23,297 --> 01:15:25,972
is through objects, the way to happiness is through consumption.

1157
01:15:26,116 --> 01:15:30,674
What makes people happy have things to do with society, with connection

1158
01:15:30,956 --> 01:15:32,854
with personal connection

1159
01:15:32,998 --> 01:15:35,643
with autonomy, with relaxation.

1160
01:15:38,764 --> 01:15:41,073
In fact when you ask people what it is that makes them happy

1161
01:15:41,210 --> 01:15:43,273
goods very rarely come into it.

1162
01:15:43,417 --> 01:15:46,322
However the problem is that capitalism has to sell goods

1163
01:15:46,466 --> 01:15:48,446
the market place provides goods. And therefore

1164
01:15:48,587 --> 01:15:51,014
what it did was it took the images

1165
01:15:51,152 --> 01:15:53,842
of the life that people really want

1166
01:15:53,987 --> 01:15:57,158
which is a life of meaning, of connection

1167
01:15:57,315 --> 01:16:02,628
of sociability, of friendship, of family, of intimacy, of sexuality

1168
01:16:02,778 --> 01:16:06,699
those are the images that it took, and it linked them to objects.

1169
01:16:06,860 --> 01:16:10,383
And so advertising is both true and false at the same time.

1170
01:16:10,539 --> 01:16:13,143
If you're simply false, you know it wouldn't work.

1171
01:16:13,281 --> 01:16:15,061
But advertising is true to the extent

1172
01:16:15,212 --> 01:16:18,713
that it reflects our real desires.

1173
01:16:21,205 --> 01:16:24,577
-As bizarre at it may sound for people who dream of fantastic wealth

1174
01:16:24,721 --> 01:16:28,324
as a cure for unhappiness, the same holds for the wealthy.

1175
01:16:28,468 --> 01:16:30,984
Beyond a certain level of material comfort

1176
01:16:31,115 --> 01:16:33,446
deprivation is relative.

1177
01:16:33,590 --> 01:16:37,299
-At the bottom level sure it's 5 million to 10 million dollars a year.

1178
01:16:37,431 --> 01:16:40,623
But once you've got 5 or 10 million, that doesn't seem like enough

1179
01:16:40,760 --> 01:16:43,564
because your associated with people that have 15 or 20.

1180
01:16:43,719 --> 01:16:46,892
And when you get to 15 or 20 then it's 50, or 100.

1181
01:16:47,042 --> 01:16:51,522
And you wind up never feeling as if you have enough. And in fact

1182
01:16:52,373 --> 01:16:55,108
people really never even thought of themselves as rich

1183
01:16:55,251 --> 01:16:57,673
even when they were colossally rich

1184
01:16:57,817 --> 01:17:02,032
because of this phenomenon that psychologists call relative deprivation.

1185
01:17:02,182 --> 01:17:05,242
They were comparing themselves not to you and me, but with each other

1186
01:17:05,380 --> 01:17:08,789
in this little world that they come to inhabit.

1187
01:17:21,061 --> 01:17:23,604
-In his book "The Status Seekers," Vance Packard

1188
01:17:23,741 --> 01:17:26,050
uses the phrase "Merchants of Discontent"

1189
01:17:26,194 --> 01:17:28,851
to describe a deliberate strategy by advertisers

1190
01:17:28,995 --> 01:17:32,462
of targeting the less affluent with status symbol messages.

1191
01:17:32,606 --> 01:17:35,766
For someone with little chance of changing their social conditions in life

1192
01:17:35,910 --> 01:17:38,626
consumerism offers a quick fix, that allows people

1193
01:17:38,770 --> 01:17:41,435
to feel as though they are climbing the social hierarchy

1194
01:17:41,578 --> 01:17:44,869
when in fact they are standing still.

1195
01:17:48,162 --> 01:17:50,251
The strategy was particularly evident

1196
01:17:50,395 --> 01:17:52,616
in mid-century automobile advertising.

1197
01:17:52,754 --> 01:17:55,768
Studies found that people who lived in housing developments

1198
01:17:55,906 --> 01:17:58,659
were more likely to park their cars outside of the garage

1199
01:17:58,803 --> 01:18:01,039
than those who could afford more expensive homes.

1200
01:18:01,183 --> 01:18:04,193
A typical example is this advertisement for Plymouth.

1201
01:18:04,337 --> 01:18:07,900
It reads, "We're not wealthy, we just look it."

1202
01:18:08,062 --> 01:18:11,106
The American way of life would be characterized by a myth

1203
01:18:11,250 --> 01:18:14,410
which would seem to make political activism unnecessary.

1204
01:18:14,560 --> 01:18:16,534
In the new democracy of material goods

1205
01:18:16,678 --> 01:18:18,592
there were an infinite number of possessions

1206
01:18:18,711 --> 01:18:21,066
to be purchased by rich and poor alike.

1207
01:18:21,201 --> 01:18:23,203
There was no need to change institutions

1208
01:18:23,334 --> 01:18:25,681
because the system was already perfect.

1209
01:18:25,831 --> 01:18:27,910
It was called "The American Dream."

1210
01:18:28,054 --> 01:18:31,680
And happiness was just one possession away.

1211
01:18:33,917 --> 01:18:35,832
-Our young adults.

1212
01:18:35,976 --> 01:18:39,781
And the shopping centers are built in their image.

1213
01:18:41,847 --> 01:18:46,175
Selling to young adults demands a new kind of marketing.

1214
01:18:53,353 --> 01:18:56,716
For these young adults, the shopping centers have built fountains

1215
01:18:56,859 --> 01:18:59,949
commissioned statues, put in restaurants

1216
01:19:00,093 --> 01:19:01,933
and free standing stairways.

1217
01:19:02,071 --> 01:19:04,397
It included banks, loan offices

1218
01:19:04,541 --> 01:19:07,144
rental plants, plant nurseries

1219
01:19:07,288 --> 01:19:10,691
and places to buy building materials.

1220
01:19:10,854 --> 01:19:12,990
The shopping centers see these young adults

1221
01:19:13,134 --> 01:19:17,043
as people whose homes are always in need of expansion.

1222
01:19:17,856 --> 01:19:19,942
People who buy in large quantities

1223
01:19:20,091 --> 01:19:23,064
and truck it away in their cars.

1224
01:19:24,130 --> 01:19:26,095
[Car honk] It's a big market."

1225
01:19:26,239 --> 01:19:28,646
-In the tinsel and glitter world of Beverly Hills

1226
01:19:28,784 --> 01:19:31,763
superstars reign supreme in million dollar mansions

1227
01:19:31,907 --> 01:19:35,238
that hold a weird fascination for everyone else.

1228
01:19:35,382 --> 01:19:37,334
Visitors rubber-neck for hours

1229
01:19:37,478 --> 01:19:39,988
just for a glimpse through the garden gates.

1230
01:19:40,132 --> 01:19:43,227
But for one man, already on the ladder to super-stardom

1231
01:19:43,371 --> 01:19:45,276
just a look wasn't enough.

1232
01:19:45,420 --> 01:19:48,667
For him it was love at first sight.

1233
01:20:30,165 --> 01:20:34,538
-We just had, at the time of this filming, it was just a few days ago

1234
01:20:34,682 --> 01:20:37,338
there was an incident at a Walmart in Long Island

1235
01:20:37,482 --> 01:20:40,773
the day after Thanksgiving, where basically people were lining up

1236
01:20:40,911 --> 01:20:43,657
for a sale, 5 in the morning.

1237
01:20:43,811 --> 01:20:45,919
And one of the workers there was crushed to death!

1238
01:20:46,063 --> 01:20:50,275
Was actually trampled to death by these shoppers.

1239
01:20:50,421 --> 01:20:52,872
And when the ambulance arrived

1240
01:20:53,003 --> 01:20:54,979
to take the poor guy to the morgue

1241
01:20:55,121 --> 01:20:58,028
or to the hospital they didn't want to get out of the way.

1242
01:20:58,172 --> 01:21:02,189
They said "I've been waiting here since 5 in the morning! I'm not leaving!'

1243
01:21:02,358 --> 01:21:06,156
So there would be a consumer society at its finest.

1244
01:21:06,338 --> 01:21:10,311
And oddly enough, exactly to the day 5 years ago

1245
01:21:10,454 --> 01:21:13,761
on that day, the day after Thanksgiving

1246
01:21:13,924 --> 01:21:16,680
the same thing happened at a Walmart in Orlando.

1247
01:21:16,824 --> 01:21:19,761
It was not a worker, it was a woman who was shopping there.

1248
01:21:19,899 --> 01:21:22,113
And she wasn't killed, but she was trampled unconscious

1249
01:21:22,245 --> 01:21:25,684
and people wouldn't get out of the way for the medics to take her away.

1250
01:21:25,841 --> 01:21:28,278
So when you get finally to that point

1251
01:21:28,421 --> 01:21:30,835
this is what Marcuse was talking about

1252
01:21:30,979 --> 01:21:33,026
and the whole idea of one-dimensional man

1253
01:21:33,172 --> 01:21:35,299
was this tremendous emptiness again.

1254
01:21:35,431 --> 01:21:38,599
So I'm gonna buy things to fill that emptiness up.

1255
01:21:38,749 --> 01:21:41,299
And then we see the religious power of it.

1256
01:21:41,449 --> 01:21:43,454
Because if the medics arrive

1257
01:21:43,573 --> 01:21:46,475
basically to take the corpse away, or the body to the hospital

1258
01:21:46,619 --> 01:21:51,101
and you're not gonna get out of the way because you're gonna save $50 on a DVD player

1259
01:21:51,260 --> 01:21:54,269
that suggests something has gone fundamentally wrong!

1260
01:21:57,017 --> 01:22:01,463
[shouting, screaming, commotion]

1261
01:22:23,222 --> 01:22:25,208
I think there's not much difference

1262
01:22:25,346 --> 01:22:28,273
between assuaging your anxiety by buying things

1263
01:22:28,421 --> 01:22:31,871
and investing in the American Dream. They seem to go hand in hand.

1264
01:22:32,016 --> 01:22:36,699
-The American Dream is a story about how society works.

1265
01:22:36,856 --> 01:22:41,969
The American Dream says that if you work hard, you will succeed.

1266
01:22:42,150 --> 01:22:45,988
-The bedrock of our economic success is the American Dream.

1267
01:22:45,988 --> 01:22:49,281
It's a dream shared in big cities and small towns

1268
01:22:49,438 --> 01:22:52,929
across races, regions and religions, that-

1269
01:22:53,067 --> 01:22:56,311
If you work hard, you can support a family.

1270
01:22:56,461 --> 01:23:00,653
That if you get sick, there will be health care that you can afford.

1271
01:23:00,803 --> 01:23:03,553
That you can retire [applause]

1272
01:23:03,704 --> 01:23:08,597
with the dignity, and security and respect that you've earned.

1273
01:23:08,747 --> 01:23:11,302
That your children can get a good education

1274
01:23:11,440 --> 01:23:13,370
and young people can go to college

1275
01:23:13,489 --> 01:23:16,139
even if they don't come from a wealthy family.

1276
01:23:16,276 --> 01:23:18,494
-And so he says we may start off in different positions.

1277
01:23:18,638 --> 01:23:20,643
There are people who are rich and there are people who are poor

1278
01:23:20,771 --> 01:23:22,650
and they're born into different kinds of contexts.

1279
01:23:22,794 --> 01:23:25,154
But the playing field is level, and that's the dream

1280
01:23:25,298 --> 01:23:28,528
of, you know, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.

1281
01:23:28,666 --> 01:23:32,298
The problem with that is, that it's actually at odds with how social mobility works.

1282
01:23:32,442 --> 01:23:35,569
Social mobility actually is much more based upon class

1283
01:23:35,713 --> 01:23:41,583
and upon the resources that you have available to you, into which you are born.

1284
01:23:42,437 --> 01:23:45,362
-Hi, I'm Paris Hilton and you're here for The FIT on MySpace.

1285
01:23:45,512 --> 01:23:48,117
Let's go check out my shoe closet first.

1286
01:23:48,646 --> 01:23:53,157
So welcome to my shoe closet. As you can tell, I really love shoes."

1287
01:23:53,344 --> 01:23:55,494
-Part of those are material resources, and part of those

1288
01:23:55,638 --> 01:23:57,646
are also cultural resources as well.

1289
01:23:57,796 --> 01:24:00,251
There are class structures

1290
01:24:00,395 --> 01:24:02,857
that keep people mostly in their places.

1291
01:24:03,007 --> 01:24:06,436
There are some slight exceptions to this where there's movement between

1292
01:24:06,582 --> 01:24:09,571
one rung or another, but, the level of social mobility

1293
01:24:09,708 --> 01:24:13,165
is remarkably low in the society.

1294
01:24:13,309 --> 01:24:16,133
And then the American Dream is punctuated by

1295
01:24:16,277 --> 01:24:19,177
these very visible examples in the media that show us

1296
01:24:19,315 --> 01:24:22,058
people who were poor who are now rich.

1297
01:24:22,199 --> 01:24:24,719
And now the question is: If those people are rich

1298
01:24:24,863 --> 01:24:26,854
if those people have made it

1299
01:24:27,004 --> 01:24:29,836
and the vast majority of the people have not

1300
01:24:29,972 --> 01:24:33,472
and the major thing that separates them is their own hard work

1301
01:24:33,624 --> 01:24:36,230
then the reason that the vast majority of people are where they are

1302
01:24:36,374 --> 01:24:39,211
is because that is where they deserve to be. You didn't work hard enough,

1303
01:24:39,349 --> 01:24:41,224
you're not intelligent enough.

1304
01:24:41,431 --> 01:24:44,685
-The right to life, liberty

1305
01:24:44,841 --> 01:24:47,806
and the pursuit of happiness.

1306
01:24:48,295 --> 01:24:51,796
Some are smart, some not. Some are successful, some not.

1307
01:24:51,940 --> 01:24:56,886
-The United States never had mass prosperity throughout its history.

1308
01:24:57,042 --> 01:25:00,614
It was just a period from 1946 to 1980,

1309
01:25:00,758 --> 01:25:02,595
where the prosperity was really...

1310
01:25:02,757 --> 01:25:06,265
it looked like it was just going better and better, for everybody.

1311
01:25:06,415 --> 01:25:09,991
And that came after World War II.

1312
01:25:10,128 --> 01:25:14,796
With the backlog of tremendous earnings from war industry and such

1313
01:25:14,946 --> 01:25:16,926
the G.I. Bill that came in

1314
01:25:17,070 --> 01:25:20,779
that developed a whole new big professional class and the like.

1315
01:25:20,916 --> 01:25:22,988
And that lasted to about 1980.

1316
01:25:22,988 --> 01:25:25,731
Since then there have been cutbacks to human services

1317
01:25:25,875 --> 01:25:28,239
cutbacks in educational opportunities

1318
01:25:28,377 --> 01:25:30,469
and greater and greater inequality.

1319
01:25:30,607 --> 01:25:33,025
Since 2000 to 2008

1320
01:25:33,182 --> 01:25:37,392
the inequality between the very rich and the rest of us

1321
01:25:37,542 --> 01:25:41,676
that inequaility is greater than it's been throughout the 20th century.

1322
01:25:41,845 --> 01:25:45,104
So we're back to like 1900 in terms of inequality.

1323
01:25:45,242 --> 01:25:48,095
Everybody just can't make it.

1324
01:25:51,442 --> 01:25:55,487
Throughout history, the rich have always argued

1325
01:25:55,656 --> 01:25:59,250
that the poor are the authors of their own poverty.

1326
01:25:59,387 --> 01:26:01,812
They're poor because they're stupid

1327
01:26:01,956 --> 01:26:04,065
they're disreputable, they're hopeless...

1328
01:26:04,215 --> 01:26:08,361
People are poor because they are paid less

1329
01:26:08,539 --> 01:26:10,835
than the value that they produce.

1330
01:26:10,991 --> 01:26:15,800
You need poverty. Poverty is needed if you're gonna have wealth.

1331
01:26:15,982 --> 01:26:20,114
The only way a rich slaveholder, a Roman senator

1332
01:26:20,258 --> 01:26:23,640
or antebellum plantation owner in the south

1333
01:26:23,784 --> 01:26:29,136
the only way they could live in this fabulously luxurious mode

1334
01:26:29,286 --> 01:26:32,239
is by having slaves who work

1335
01:26:32,377 --> 01:26:36,619
from the crack of dawn down into the night.

1336
01:26:36,750 --> 01:26:39,348
That's expropriation. That's creating

1337
01:26:39,486 --> 01:26:43,126
the poverty of the slave, or the serf or the worker

1338
01:26:43,282 --> 01:26:47,017
so that the slaveholder, or the lord, the feudal lord

1339
01:26:47,224 --> 01:26:52,021
or the plutocrats, the capitalists can really accumulate wealth.

1340
01:27:35,356 --> 01:27:37,900
-The idea that human happiness is connected to

1341
01:27:38,044 --> 01:27:40,291
the immense accumulation of commodities

1342
01:27:40,435 --> 01:27:43,068
I think that that idea is what is driving development

1343
01:27:43,218 --> 01:27:45,545
in what we used to call the developed world

1344
01:27:45,682 --> 01:27:48,933
it is driving development in China, it is driving development in India

1345
01:27:49,077 --> 01:27:51,912
I think it will increasingly drive development in Africa as well.

1346
01:27:52,062 --> 01:27:54,153
I think we're starting to see

1347
01:27:54,297 --> 01:27:56,859
the results of what that means for the planet.

1348
01:27:57,015 --> 01:28:01,938
When not only the 5 percent American population strives for that

1349
01:28:02,082 --> 01:28:04,907
but when increasingly the rest of the world also is pulled into that.

1350
01:28:05,051 --> 01:28:07,277
And you then have to provide the goods

1351
01:28:07,421 --> 01:28:09,961
and the energy that those goods take to produce.

1352
01:28:10,121 --> 01:28:14,405
We're arriving at the kind of exhaustion of the physical planet.

1353
01:28:17,225 --> 01:28:20,993
The ancient philosopher Confucius, he was asked

1354
01:28:21,137 --> 01:28:23,927
what he would do if he was ever to rule the state.

1355
01:28:24,074 --> 01:28:26,450
Someone said "OK you're in charge of the state, what would you do?"

1356
01:28:26,450 --> 01:28:31,808
And he said a very interesting thing, he said he would "rectify the language."

1357
01:28:31,808 --> 01:28:34,238
And I think if he was asked that in modern day he would say

1358
01:28:34,376 --> 01:28:37,844
"Let me control the media." If you can control the stories

1359
01:28:38,000 --> 01:28:40,571
you don't need to have soldiers on the street corners to control them

1360
01:28:40,715 --> 01:28:43,671
you can control people in their own heads and their own imaginations.

1361
01:28:43,822 --> 01:28:46,753
On one end it's really depressing because it's like: "how do you then get out of it?"

1362
01:28:46,897 --> 01:28:49,144
Because there's no way you can have control of the media

1363
01:28:49,281 --> 01:28:51,885
there's no way you can compete with these stories that are told

1364
01:28:52,029 --> 01:28:53,885
thousands of times a day.

1365
01:28:54,035 --> 01:28:57,303
Through advertising, through programming, through newspapers.

1366
01:28:57,436 --> 01:29:00,573
Through the Internet now, through video games, through all kinds of ways.

1367
01:29:00,725 --> 01:29:04,630
But the reason I'm hopeful the reason that actually gives me some optimism is

1368
01:29:04,767 --> 01:29:07,542
that capitalism has to do that.

1369
01:29:07,692 --> 01:29:10,762
That unless it does that, they know that things will fall apart.

1370
01:29:10,912 --> 01:29:13,143
So capitalism in essence is like a house of cards.

1371
01:29:13,293 --> 01:29:15,597
A house of cards that has to be constantly held together.

1372
01:29:15,728 --> 01:29:18,991
We have to be told every single day what this story is.

1373
01:29:19,110 --> 01:29:21,091
They have to do it every day because it's unnatural.

1374
01:29:21,193 --> 01:29:22,600
If it was natural they wouldn't have to do it.

1375
01:29:22,600 --> 01:29:26,150
And if they stop they know that in fact it would fall apart.

1376
01:29:26,300 --> 01:29:28,853
That actually is the great hope for me:

1377
01:29:29,003 --> 01:29:31,885
is in fact, the amount of time they have to spend

1378
01:29:32,016 --> 01:29:34,997
convincing us about the value of the society

1379
01:29:35,147 --> 01:29:37,118
is in fact what gives me hope

1380
01:29:37,262 --> 01:29:41,808
that there's an alternative, just below the surface

1381
01:29:41,957 --> 01:29:46,957
And that alternative is much more human, much more compassionate

1382
01:29:47,089 --> 01:29:50,824
it's much more connected to concern for other people

1383
01:29:50,968 --> 01:29:53,446
it's much more connected to concern for the planet.

1384
01:29:53,587 --> 01:29:56,756
And that it's being held down by this incredible

1385
01:29:56,900 --> 01:29:59,690
and relentless propaganda system.

1386
01:29:59,831 --> 01:30:05,639
V. Epilogue

1387
01:30:06,718 --> 01:30:10,176
-If a decision is made by a centralized authority, it's going to represent

1388
01:30:10,327 --> 01:30:12,982
the interests of the particular group in power.

1389
01:30:13,120 --> 01:30:17,055
If power is actually rooted in large parts of the population

1390
01:30:17,199 --> 01:30:20,190
if people can actually participate in social planning

1391
01:30:20,340 --> 01:30:23,646
then they will presumably do so in terms of their own interests.

1392
01:30:23,784 --> 01:30:26,421
So that's why Madison for example

1393
01:30:26,565 --> 01:30:31,429
and Lippmann and Bernays, and a whole host of others

1394
01:30:31,586 --> 01:30:36,162
have argued that we cannot permit the population to participate.

1395
01:30:36,316 --> 01:30:39,553
Because if they do they will pursue their own interests.

1396
01:30:39,697 --> 01:30:43,073
Not the interests of the wealth of the nation.

1397
01:30:43,223 --> 01:30:46,692
If you have centralized power they'll use it for their own interests.

1398
01:30:46,855 --> 01:30:49,179
You don't have to read that in a complicated textbook

1399
01:30:49,323 --> 01:30:51,951
it's understandable by any 10 year old child

1400
01:30:52,110 --> 01:30:55,492
not by "educated people"

1401
01:30:55,648 --> 01:30:58,463
that have had it driven out of their heads.

1402
01:30:58,634 --> 01:31:02,417
Various illusions replacing self serving illusions.

1403
01:31:02,567 --> 01:31:06,110
If the population are participants they'll serve their own interests.

1404
01:31:06,260 --> 01:31:08,609
Public opinion is very well studied.

1405
01:31:08,741 --> 01:31:12,094
So we have a wealth of information about what the public wants.

1406
01:31:12,238 --> 01:31:15,103
And there's a huge disconnect

1407
01:31:15,247 --> 01:31:18,366
between public opinion and public policy.

1408
01:31:18,529 --> 01:31:23,671
The public and policymakers differ enormously on crucial issues.

1409
01:31:23,815 --> 01:31:26,820
It's all very natural... nothing surprising about it

1410
01:31:26,970 --> 01:31:28,593
and people understand it.

1411
01:31:28,724 --> 01:31:31,952
So about 80 percent of the population of the United States

1412
01:31:32,087 --> 01:31:34,073
says that

1413
01:31:34,211 --> 01:31:38,125
the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.

1414
01:31:38,273 --> 01:31:42,315
-What do you mean by democracy? If you mean by democracy

1415
01:31:42,459 --> 01:31:46,536
a system that accepts

1416
01:31:46,783 --> 01:31:50,471
that the relative distribution of power

1417
01:31:50,609 --> 01:31:54,053
and influence and wealth and income

1418
01:31:54,197 --> 01:31:58,020
in the society is sacrosanct

1419
01:31:58,182 --> 01:32:03,873
if the social system we call and know as capitalism

1420
01:32:04,014 --> 01:32:06,253
is inviolable

1421
01:32:06,397 --> 01:32:09,832
and you can't in fact erode

1422
01:32:09,963 --> 01:32:13,560
or undercut the primacy

1423
01:32:13,704 --> 01:32:18,663
of that classes' power and property, politically

1424
01:32:18,844 --> 01:32:21,881
then you've just ruled out democracy.

1425
01:32:22,032 --> 01:32:25,050
The founders had a very clear idea

1426
01:32:25,201 --> 01:32:31,016
that in order for political power to be democratic and to be equal

1427
01:32:31,224 --> 01:32:35,312
economic power also had to be democratic and equal.

1428
01:32:35,550 --> 01:32:38,590
And that was the last thing they wanted.

1429
01:32:38,741 --> 01:32:42,454
So they saw clearly, that

1430
01:32:42,604 --> 01:32:46,035
behind political democracy

1431
01:32:46,189 --> 01:32:48,648
was economic democracy.

1432
01:32:48,798 --> 01:32:53,168
Behind political equality was economic equality.

1433
01:32:53,355 --> 01:32:56,412
And they did everything they could to block it.

1434
01:32:56,562 --> 01:32:59,070
-The claims of mind control

1435
01:32:59,239 --> 01:33:02,261
are based on the belief

1436
01:33:02,430 --> 01:33:08,186
that human beings are powerless or relatively powerless

1437
01:33:08,404 --> 01:33:12,712
when they become targets of psychological operations and propaganda.

1438
01:33:13,477 --> 01:33:16,943
Media control yeah, it has an impact on public opinion

1439
01:33:17,074 --> 01:33:20,457
without a doubt. It has an impact on the assumptions

1440
01:33:20,608 --> 01:33:24,885
that people bring, to try to figure out what to do with their lives.

1441
01:33:25,035 --> 01:33:29,703
It's powerful. But it's not the same as mind control.

1442
01:33:29,860 --> 01:33:35,108
I think the best way to stop propaganda

1443
01:33:35,440 --> 01:33:39,970
is for people to understand what it is and how it works.

1444
01:33:40,539 --> 01:33:43,051
I don't think we're going to stop propaganda

1445
01:33:43,201 --> 01:33:46,029
so long as we have freedom of speech.

1446
01:33:46,179 --> 01:33:50,333
And frankly I think that's a good thing for us.

1447
01:33:50,483 --> 01:33:54,635
But there will always be people who exploit freedom of speech for their own ends.

1448
01:33:54,779 --> 01:33:58,345
But, propaganda loses its effectiveness

1449
01:33:58,501 --> 01:34:00,913
if people understand what is going on.

1450
01:34:01,063 --> 01:34:05,502
A very important thing that can be done to reduce the power of propaganda

1451
01:34:05,659 --> 01:34:09,616
is to force the players to the surface.

1452
01:34:09,766 --> 01:34:13,048
So that, where you have campaigns

1453
01:34:13,191 --> 01:34:17,033
political campaigns, product campaigns, cultural campaigns

1454
01:34:17,189 --> 01:34:22,623
that are organized by big propaganda agencies, public relations agencies.

1455
01:34:23,194 --> 01:34:29,050
Then, part of the task for people who are observing this going on

1456
01:34:29,282 --> 01:34:32,607
is to make this public. Make it understood

1457
01:34:32,807 --> 01:34:36,896
that what's appearing on the front page of the Washington Post for example

1458
01:34:37,043 --> 01:34:40,725
really is a propaganda or public relations campaign.

1459
01:34:40,869 --> 01:34:43,328
It's coming from a particular faction of society

1460
01:34:43,472 --> 01:34:47,193
who are paying for it. And, that they have names.

1461
01:34:47,344 --> 01:34:52,402
-It depends on what people believe, what people perceive

1462
01:34:52,552 --> 01:34:57,504
what people know. And for a democracy to really function and thrive

1463
01:34:57,735 --> 01:35:00,203
unlike Eddie Bernays, I would say

1464
01:35:00,335 --> 01:35:04,733
what we need is more information, more freedom, more transparency

1465
01:35:04,871 --> 01:35:09,763
and more information about who's manipulating public opinion

1466
01:35:09,907 --> 01:35:14,230
and the public mind. Eddie Bernays believed that fundamentally

1467
01:35:15,362 --> 01:35:18,206
people were unable to govern themselves in a democracy

1468
01:35:18,344 --> 01:35:21,706
because most of us were just too dumb to figure it out.

1469
01:35:21,857 --> 01:35:24,487
And so he used that to justify his practice

1470
01:35:24,631 --> 01:35:29,621
that he exalted, of managing and manipulating public opinion.

1471
01:35:29,988 --> 01:35:33,238
I think actually what we need is a lot more exposure

1472
01:35:33,239 --> 01:35:37,367
and education about how public opinion is managed and manipulated

1473
01:35:37,509 --> 01:35:42,029
so that we have a citizenry that can actually

1474
01:35:42,185 --> 01:35:45,936
function and be critical thinkers and decision makers

1475
01:35:46,086 --> 01:35:48,687
and govern themselves in a democracy.

1476
01:35:48,837 --> 01:35:52,062
Clearly, individual and public opinion

1477
01:35:52,225 --> 01:35:55,215
is crucial to everything.

1478
01:35:55,365 --> 01:36:00,107
As long as you can manage and manipulate public opinion,

1479
01:36:00,257 --> 01:36:03,389
or as Burson-Marsteller liked to put it, 'public perception'

1480
01:36:03,533 --> 01:36:08,360
you can control public behavior and policy.

1481
01:36:08,529 --> 01:36:11,176
That's what Eddie Bernays knew. That's what he was saying

1482
01:36:11,314 --> 01:36:14,081
when he talked about engineering consent.

1483
01:36:14,225 --> 01:36:18,978
And so yeah, I believe that the ultimate battlefield

1484
01:36:19,172 --> 01:36:22,105
really is in the mind.

1485
01:36:34,563 --> 01:36:43,201
Psywars is part of a series. Please visit Metanoia-Films.org for other entries.

1486
01:36:47,334 --> 01:36:52,012
Written and Directed by Scott Noble

1487
01:36:54,555 --> 01:36:59,620
Narrated by Mikela Jay

1488
01:38:19,796 --> 01:38:29,223
Metanoia-Films.org