All You Really Need To Know About Politics
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In Three Quotes
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
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American industry is not free, as once it was free; American enterprise is not free; the man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak. That is the reason, and because the strong have crushed the weak the strong dominate the industry and the economic life of this country.
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The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
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We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world — no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
— Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1912)
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
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In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons […] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
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Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
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A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable.
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If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.
— Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing […] a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.
— Aldous Huxley, The Ultimate Revolution (speech at U.C. Berkeley, 1962)
SEE ALSO
- 16 Basic Principles of Mass Indoctrination
- Huxleyan versus Orwellian totalitarianism
- Understanding Privilege — How privilege works in the real world
- Politically incorrect pop music
- Political Correctness, in a nutshell
- Die Antwoord — Poster children of a modern dystopia
- How to destroy nations with love and tolerance
- White countries for everyone
- Anti-Racist Hitler
- The Collapse of The American Dream
- The Great Immigration Debate of 1621
- Storm
- The Cartoons of Joe Le Corbeau
- The Best Part of Censorship
- The Worst Part of Censorship
