I love this! There is so much polarised ‘debate’ where people can get stuck defending positions. Perhaps if we saw more of this broader treatment, we might relax a bit more and discussions might become more productive. Vaccine-injured for 20 months, I gently tell people about my injuries and while some are interested, many appear to close down. There may be a few reasons. They mightn’t know what to say, they might feel that the notion of vaccines being totally safe and effective is being threatened by my news. The safety they might feel is threatened could be for themselves, or it could be that they see themselves as the good guys and they might see me as potentially, one of the bad guys, (I’m a woman, btw.) What troubles me is that these people don’t appear to care about reality, my wellbeing, or the truth. They seem to have no inquisitive qualities in the moment.
Reminds me of this passage from Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, speaking about Harold Laswell's work:
"Propaganda, he says, is as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad; since were good people, obviously, — that’s sort of true by definition — we’ll use it for good purposes, and there should be no negative connotations about that. In fact, it’s moral to use it, because that’s the only way that you can save the ignorant and stupid masses of the population from their own errors."
From Noam Chomsky’s speech while on book tour for
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media in 1989.
“If you go back to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences published in 1933 — days when people were a little more open and honest in what they said — there’s an article on propaganda, and it’s well worth reading. There’s an entry under propaganda. The entry is written by a leading- one- maybe the leading American political scientist, Harold Lasswell, who was very influential, particularly in this area, communications, and so on. And in this entry in the International Encyclopedia on propaganda he says, we should not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. They’re not, he said. Even with the rise of mass education- doesn’t mean that people can judge their own interests. They can’t. The best judges of their interests are elites — the specialized class, the cool observers, the people who have rationality — and therefore they must be granted the means to impose their will. Notice, for the common good. Because, again, because- well, he says, because of the ignorance and superstition of the masses, he said it’s necessary to have a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda. Propaganda, he says, we shouldn’t have a negative connotation about, it’s neutral. Propaganda, he says, is as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad; since were good people, obviously, — that’s sort of true by definition — we’ll use it for good purposes, and there should be no negative connotations about that. In fact, it’s moral to use it, because that’s the only way that you can save the ignorant and stupid masses of the population from their own errors. You don’t let a three year old run across the street, and you don’t let ordinary people make their own decisions. You have to control them.
And why do you need propaganda? Well, he explains that. He says, in military-run or feudal societies — what we would these days call totalitarian societies — you don’t really need propaganda that much. And the reason is you’ve got a- you’ve got a club in your hand. You can control the way people behave, and therefore it doesn’t matter much what they think, because if they get out of line you can control them — for their own good, of course. But once you lose the club, you know, once the State loses its capacity to coerce by force, then you have some problems. The voice of the people is heard — you’ve got all these formal mechanisms around that permit people to express themselves, and even participate, and vote, and that sort of thing — and you can’t control them by force, because you’ve lost that capacity. But the voice of the people is heard, and therefore you’ve got to make sure it says the right thing. And in order to make sure it says the right thing, you’ve got to have effective and sophisticated propaganda, again, for their own good.
So in a- as a society becomes more free — that is, there’s less capacity to coerce — it simply needs more sophisticated indoctrination and propaganda. For the public good.
The similarity between this and Leninist ideology is very striking. According to Leninist ideology, the cool observers, the radical intelligentsia, will be the vanguard who will lead the stupid and ignorant masses on to, you know, communist utopia, because they’re too stupid to work it out by themselves.
And in fact there’s been a very easy transition over these years between one and the other position. You know, it’s very striking that continually people move from one position to the other, very easily. And I think the reason for the ease is partly because they’re sort of the same position. So you can be either a Marxist-Leninist commissar, or you can be somebody celebrating the magnificence of State capitalism, and you can serve those guys. It’s more or less the same position. You pick one or the other depending on your estimate of where power is, and that can change.
The- and in fact the mainstream of the intelligentsia, I think over the last, say, through this century, have tended to be in one or the other camp. Either- there’s this strong appeal of Marxism-Leninism to the intelligentsia, for obvious reasons — I don’t have to bother saying. And there’s the same appeal of these doctrines to the intelligentsia, because it puts them in the position of justifying- of having a justified role as ideological managers, in the service of real power, corporate/State power. For the public good, of course. So you naturally are tempted to one or the other position.”
I love this! There is so much polarised ‘debate’ where people can get stuck defending positions. Perhaps if we saw more of this broader treatment, we might relax a bit more and discussions might become more productive. Vaccine-injured for 20 months, I gently tell people about my injuries and while some are interested, many appear to close down. There may be a few reasons. They mightn’t know what to say, they might feel that the notion of vaccines being totally safe and effective is being threatened by my news. The safety they might feel is threatened could be for themselves, or it could be that they see themselves as the good guys and they might see me as potentially, one of the bad guys, (I’m a woman, btw.) What troubles me is that these people don’t appear to care about reality, my wellbeing, or the truth. They seem to have no inquisitive qualities in the moment.
Thanks for a great article!
Reminds me of this passage from Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, speaking about Harold Laswell's work:
"Propaganda, he says, is as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad; since were good people, obviously, — that’s sort of true by definition — we’ll use it for good purposes, and there should be no negative connotations about that. In fact, it’s moral to use it, because that’s the only way that you can save the ignorant and stupid masses of the population from their own errors."
From Noam Chomsky’s speech while on book tour for
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media in 1989.
https://chomsky.info/19890315/
“If you go back to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences published in 1933 — days when people were a little more open and honest in what they said — there’s an article on propaganda, and it’s well worth reading. There’s an entry under propaganda. The entry is written by a leading- one- maybe the leading American political scientist, Harold Lasswell, who was very influential, particularly in this area, communications, and so on. And in this entry in the International Encyclopedia on propaganda he says, we should not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. They’re not, he said. Even with the rise of mass education- doesn’t mean that people can judge their own interests. They can’t. The best judges of their interests are elites — the specialized class, the cool observers, the people who have rationality — and therefore they must be granted the means to impose their will. Notice, for the common good. Because, again, because- well, he says, because of the ignorance and superstition of the masses, he said it’s necessary to have a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda. Propaganda, he says, we shouldn’t have a negative connotation about, it’s neutral. Propaganda, he says, is as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad; since were good people, obviously, — that’s sort of true by definition — we’ll use it for good purposes, and there should be no negative connotations about that. In fact, it’s moral to use it, because that’s the only way that you can save the ignorant and stupid masses of the population from their own errors. You don’t let a three year old run across the street, and you don’t let ordinary people make their own decisions. You have to control them.
And why do you need propaganda? Well, he explains that. He says, in military-run or feudal societies — what we would these days call totalitarian societies — you don’t really need propaganda that much. And the reason is you’ve got a- you’ve got a club in your hand. You can control the way people behave, and therefore it doesn’t matter much what they think, because if they get out of line you can control them — for their own good, of course. But once you lose the club, you know, once the State loses its capacity to coerce by force, then you have some problems. The voice of the people is heard — you’ve got all these formal mechanisms around that permit people to express themselves, and even participate, and vote, and that sort of thing — and you can’t control them by force, because you’ve lost that capacity. But the voice of the people is heard, and therefore you’ve got to make sure it says the right thing. And in order to make sure it says the right thing, you’ve got to have effective and sophisticated propaganda, again, for their own good.
So in a- as a society becomes more free — that is, there’s less capacity to coerce — it simply needs more sophisticated indoctrination and propaganda. For the public good.
The similarity between this and Leninist ideology is very striking. According to Leninist ideology, the cool observers, the radical intelligentsia, will be the vanguard who will lead the stupid and ignorant masses on to, you know, communist utopia, because they’re too stupid to work it out by themselves.
And in fact there’s been a very easy transition over these years between one and the other position. You know, it’s very striking that continually people move from one position to the other, very easily. And I think the reason for the ease is partly because they’re sort of the same position. So you can be either a Marxist-Leninist commissar, or you can be somebody celebrating the magnificence of State capitalism, and you can serve those guys. It’s more or less the same position. You pick one or the other depending on your estimate of where power is, and that can change.
The- and in fact the mainstream of the intelligentsia, I think over the last, say, through this century, have tended to be in one or the other camp. Either- there’s this strong appeal of Marxism-Leninism to the intelligentsia, for obvious reasons — I don’t have to bother saying. And there’s the same appeal of these doctrines to the intelligentsia, because it puts them in the position of justifying- of having a justified role as ideological managers, in the service of real power, corporate/State power. For the public good, of course. So you naturally are tempted to one or the other position.”