henry
The Cosmic Force
Been reading a fascinating look at the history of Public Relations, PR:A Social History of Spin by Stuart Ewen.
The author describes the shift that occurred after WWI as a result of the Russian Revolution, the Great War, and the reinterpretation of humans as rational animals (the Enlightenment view) to irrational animals dominated by unconscious desires (the Freudian view).
If humans -- or at least the middle class -- are rational creatures, then political debate happens through argument and the presentation of facts. The goal of education is to form a ‘citizen’ who is able to participate in debate in order to be part of the democratic process. Ewen calls this the Jeffersonian tradition, where policy would be enriched by discussion and the different points of view brought in.
It is contrasted with the approach of Alexander Hamilton, who “discounted the opinions of ’the average man’ and mistrusted the ideal of “popular government.’”
The end of the 19th century in the US saw the rise of the trusts, monopolies, which were a threat to the middle class. Progressive journalists at the time saw their role in presenting the facts of the detrimental aspects of monopoly capitalism to the middle class. Because the threat to the middle class came from the top (big capital), they were eager to read the muckrakers.
Yet at the same time, massive immigration was bringing them darn foreigners to the States, and they inevitably became part of the working class. They were seen by even the middle class as unprepared to participate in democratic life, and as time went on, they were seen as more of a threat to the middle class than monopoly capital, especially with the Russian Revolution. The elites used the threat of the revolution of the great unwashed to refocus the anger of the middle class on the threat from below rather than the threat from above.
During WWI, the US government formed the Committee for Public Information, the first overtly propagandistic arm of the government, to mobilize and guarantee support for the war effort. The men who ran it were well-versed in Freudian theory and the work of social scientists of the era (Le Bon, Trotter, et al) who were elaborating theory on how ‘public opinion’ could be manipulated and shaped. Their theories emphasized the irrational character of public opinion, and how it could be influenced by symbols and images which bypassed reason. (Think of the repeated image of the collapsing of the Twin Towers on 9/11.)
Using symbols achieved several goals, including:
1. Symbols could rally groups and individuals on a level that specific political programmes could not. They had a vagueness and ambiguity along with their emotional power. Slogans such as “Family”, “Law & Order” or “The Fight for Democracy” presented with strong visual imagery were emotional triggers and most people would rally behind them as long as the specifics of what the terms represented remained vague. The trouble came when ideas such as these were translated into concrete policy on how to attain them. If the discussion of specifics were public, then the emotional front would be broken as people would have different ideas on how to implement the policy.
If people were rallied behind the symbol and left out of the discussion of policy, then the united front could be maintained.
2. Public discussion takes time. How much easier to avoid it all together and permit the elites running the show to do what they want when they want.
The repercussions on the educational system in the US should be clear. If the ‘public’, including the middle class, are irrational creatures led by images and who have no place in the elaboration of policy, then the educational system no longer needs to produce ‘citizens’, it needs workers and consumers.
The facade of public relations was very successful during the twenties. It was a time of economic growth and many small investor were brought into the stock market. Consumer culture began to take shape. Business and government joined to suppress any revolt on the part of the working class, using troops and death where necessary.
That fell apart with the depression. [And it is interesting to note the similarities between the crisis and its origins in the 20s and what we se today.] When the mask dropped and millions where thrown out of work, with no social net to help them, corporate PR couldn’t continue to hold sway over “public opinion”. FDR used the tools to attempt to restore the Jeffersonian tradition. Through his radio broadcasts, FDR treated the public as thinking individuals. He used all the tools of propaganda to get the people on side for the New Deal. And he was very successful. Big business was under attack. The assumptions about “free enterprise” were no longer accepted.
The government of FDR used photos to bring to middle America images of Americans who were poor, who had lost everything. Prior to this time, most Americans had never seen such poverty in their own country. These images helped open their eyes.
This situation only began to change during WWII when big business was needed for the war effort. After the war, big business was better perceived, but the expectations of the American people had changed. They expected a social net. They expected the government to step in when business went too far in its greed. In the late forties, the US almost got a national health care program. It was only scuttled after a year-long PR campaign on the behalf of the American Medical Association which associated national health care with communism.
And, of course, television played a major role in breaking down public space where people could exchange ideas and creating a virtual space where people became a virtual citizen. Commercial television ensured that the corporate way of seeing the world became the only accepted “American” way of seeing the world.
Any idea that the government should look after the public good was denounced as “collectivism”. Any infringement on “free enterprise” was communism. Money spent on public welfare was socialistic; money given to the military-industrial complex was patriotic.
We are still reeling from the post-war corporate PR attacks.
In talking about the cuts that have been made in social welfare since the years of Reagan, gains that had been won during the New Deal, Stuart Ewen writes:
The People
One of the other themes in the book is that of “the public” or “the people”. FDR was able to conjure up an identification between the “forgotten man”, a term often employed by FDR, (‘forgotten’ by big business and the elite) and “the people”, casting the New Deal as working for “the people” against the interests of business. It is instructive to see how business was able to fight back.
Using public opinion polling, business began reframing “the people” as “the consumer”. In the beginning, that essentially meant white middle class Americans. But with the 60s and the rise of the civil rights movements, the feminist movement, etc., public opinion polling began narrowing their focus by cutting up “the consumer” into demographics. They could target blacks, women, gays; if there was a new movement, it could be turned into a demographic, and then into a “lifestyle”. And once you had identified (and created) a “lifestyle”, you could turn it into another branch of “a consumer”.
And so we see a further splintering of “the people” into ever tighter and more focused consumer groups. These differences were played up to keep “the people” divided, and anything their shared, such as being cogs in the corporate state, was swept aside and ignored. “The people” are easier to control if they are splintered and set against each other. We saw how effective this was during the protests against the war in Iraq when groups would try to piggyback secondary issues onto the demonstrations, issues that would divide rather than unite people.
As you might guess, I strongly recommend this book. I think it will be very useful in helping us formulate our own PR for the Truth in the years to come.
The economic collapse in the thirties showed that the veil of illusion can fall very quickly when a crisis in the real world shatters the illusion. People will then be open to new ideas and answers that would have been unthinkable before.
The author describes the shift that occurred after WWI as a result of the Russian Revolution, the Great War, and the reinterpretation of humans as rational animals (the Enlightenment view) to irrational animals dominated by unconscious desires (the Freudian view).
If humans -- or at least the middle class -- are rational creatures, then political debate happens through argument and the presentation of facts. The goal of education is to form a ‘citizen’ who is able to participate in debate in order to be part of the democratic process. Ewen calls this the Jeffersonian tradition, where policy would be enriched by discussion and the different points of view brought in.
It is contrasted with the approach of Alexander Hamilton, who “discounted the opinions of ’the average man’ and mistrusted the ideal of “popular government.’”
The end of the 19th century in the US saw the rise of the trusts, monopolies, which were a threat to the middle class. Progressive journalists at the time saw their role in presenting the facts of the detrimental aspects of monopoly capitalism to the middle class. Because the threat to the middle class came from the top (big capital), they were eager to read the muckrakers.
Yet at the same time, massive immigration was bringing them darn foreigners to the States, and they inevitably became part of the working class. They were seen by even the middle class as unprepared to participate in democratic life, and as time went on, they were seen as more of a threat to the middle class than monopoly capital, especially with the Russian Revolution. The elites used the threat of the revolution of the great unwashed to refocus the anger of the middle class on the threat from below rather than the threat from above.
During WWI, the US government formed the Committee for Public Information, the first overtly propagandistic arm of the government, to mobilize and guarantee support for the war effort. The men who ran it were well-versed in Freudian theory and the work of social scientists of the era (Le Bon, Trotter, et al) who were elaborating theory on how ‘public opinion’ could be manipulated and shaped. Their theories emphasized the irrational character of public opinion, and how it could be influenced by symbols and images which bypassed reason. (Think of the repeated image of the collapsing of the Twin Towers on 9/11.)
Using symbols achieved several goals, including:
1. Symbols could rally groups and individuals on a level that specific political programmes could not. They had a vagueness and ambiguity along with their emotional power. Slogans such as “Family”, “Law & Order” or “The Fight for Democracy” presented with strong visual imagery were emotional triggers and most people would rally behind them as long as the specifics of what the terms represented remained vague. The trouble came when ideas such as these were translated into concrete policy on how to attain them. If the discussion of specifics were public, then the emotional front would be broken as people would have different ideas on how to implement the policy.
If people were rallied behind the symbol and left out of the discussion of policy, then the united front could be maintained.
2. Public discussion takes time. How much easier to avoid it all together and permit the elites running the show to do what they want when they want.
The repercussions on the educational system in the US should be clear. If the ‘public’, including the middle class, are irrational creatures led by images and who have no place in the elaboration of policy, then the educational system no longer needs to produce ‘citizens’, it needs workers and consumers.
The facade of public relations was very successful during the twenties. It was a time of economic growth and many small investor were brought into the stock market. Consumer culture began to take shape. Business and government joined to suppress any revolt on the part of the working class, using troops and death where necessary.
That fell apart with the depression. [And it is interesting to note the similarities between the crisis and its origins in the 20s and what we se today.] When the mask dropped and millions where thrown out of work, with no social net to help them, corporate PR couldn’t continue to hold sway over “public opinion”. FDR used the tools to attempt to restore the Jeffersonian tradition. Through his radio broadcasts, FDR treated the public as thinking individuals. He used all the tools of propaganda to get the people on side for the New Deal. And he was very successful. Big business was under attack. The assumptions about “free enterprise” were no longer accepted.
The government of FDR used photos to bring to middle America images of Americans who were poor, who had lost everything. Prior to this time, most Americans had never seen such poverty in their own country. These images helped open their eyes.
This situation only began to change during WWII when big business was needed for the war effort. After the war, big business was better perceived, but the expectations of the American people had changed. They expected a social net. They expected the government to step in when business went too far in its greed. In the late forties, the US almost got a national health care program. It was only scuttled after a year-long PR campaign on the behalf of the American Medical Association which associated national health care with communism.
And, of course, television played a major role in breaking down public space where people could exchange ideas and creating a virtual space where people became a virtual citizen. Commercial television ensured that the corporate way of seeing the world became the only accepted “American” way of seeing the world.
Any idea that the government should look after the public good was denounced as “collectivism”. Any infringement on “free enterprise” was communism. Money spent on public welfare was socialistic; money given to the military-industrial complex was patriotic.
We are still reeling from the post-war corporate PR attacks.
In talking about the cuts that have been made in social welfare since the years of Reagan, gains that had been won during the New Deal, Stuart Ewen writes:
The People
One of the other themes in the book is that of “the public” or “the people”. FDR was able to conjure up an identification between the “forgotten man”, a term often employed by FDR, (‘forgotten’ by big business and the elite) and “the people”, casting the New Deal as working for “the people” against the interests of business. It is instructive to see how business was able to fight back.
Using public opinion polling, business began reframing “the people” as “the consumer”. In the beginning, that essentially meant white middle class Americans. But with the 60s and the rise of the civil rights movements, the feminist movement, etc., public opinion polling began narrowing their focus by cutting up “the consumer” into demographics. They could target blacks, women, gays; if there was a new movement, it could be turned into a demographic, and then into a “lifestyle”. And once you had identified (and created) a “lifestyle”, you could turn it into another branch of “a consumer”.
And so we see a further splintering of “the people” into ever tighter and more focused consumer groups. These differences were played up to keep “the people” divided, and anything their shared, such as being cogs in the corporate state, was swept aside and ignored. “The people” are easier to control if they are splintered and set against each other. We saw how effective this was during the protests against the war in Iraq when groups would try to piggyback secondary issues onto the demonstrations, issues that would divide rather than unite people.
As you might guess, I strongly recommend this book. I think it will be very useful in helping us formulate our own PR for the Truth in the years to come.
The economic collapse in the thirties showed that the veil of illusion can fall very quickly when a crisis in the real world shatters the illusion. People will then be open to new ideas and answers that would have been unthinkable before.
