Weapons of mass distraction, a short history :
Gustav Le Bon (1841–1931), etnologist and psychologist (he was one of the founders of «Social Psychology») born in France in Nogent-Le Retrou, was to first psychologist to study scientifically the behavior of crowds, trying to identify its peculiar characters and proposing adequate techniques to guide and control them. This is the reason why his works were read and carefully studied by totalitarian dictators of the 20th century, who based their power on the capacity to control and manipulate masses.
Le Bon writes: «In order to understand the ideas, the beliefs that today seed in crowds, to blossom tomorrow, we must know how the terrain was prepared. The teachings given to the youth of a country allows to foresee a bit of the destiny of that country. The eduction of today’s generation justifies the saddest previsions. The soul of crowds, in part, gets better or more alterated with instruction. Therefore it is necessary to show how it was forged.»
A central topic of Le Bon is: «In the collective soul the intellectual attitutes of people, and consequently their individuality, is cancelled. The heterogeneous dissolves in the homogeneous and the inconscious characters prevail».
After Le Bon another propaganda guru was Bernays, Freud’s nephew: initially Bernays studied Le Bon’s work, «Psychology of Crowds», published in 1895. An important reference for many political men, it was carefully studied by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. The latter commented: «I’ve read all of Le Bon’s writings and I don’t know how many times I’ve re-read his Psychology of Crowds. It’s a capital work to which I often go back.»
Edward, who is of Jewish origins, doesn’t come from some poor shtetl of Poland or Ukraine, but from Vienna’s middle class, where he is born in November 1891, and his family has close blodd links to Sigmund Freud: his father, Ely, is the brother-in-law of the famous analist, while his mother Anna, is the sister.
Bernays will use these links to promote his activities. Scott Cutlip, historian of PR, remembers that «when someone met him for the first time, it wasn’t long before uncle Sigmund came into the conversation». The relationship with Freud was constantly at the center of his thoughts and his work as a consultant». In substance, his conviction was that a conscious and intelligent manipulation of opinion and habits of masses has an important role in the democratic society.
«Those who have this mechanism in hand constitute the true executive power of the country. We are dominated, our minds shaped, our taste formed, our ideas suggested, by people we never heard about. It’s them who move the wires…».
From Bernays we learn that: «The conscious and intelligent manipulation of opinions and mass opinions has an important role in a democratic society, those who master this social device constitute an invisible power that truly leads the country.»
In a review of «Propaganda» we read: «The most significant aspects of what today is called the society of communication and/or the society of shows had been found and analyzed by Bernays, well before Debord and the situationists. Unlike the latter, though, he didn’t cultivate revolutionary utopias, he was perfectly integrated in the American economical and social system, and although he recognized its limitations, he truly appreciated the substantial avlidity consistent in the great social mobility, an aspect that had ensured its great success. Bernays’ activities and works were well known even outside of the United States, for example in Germany. In 1933 Joseph Goebbels revealed to an American journalist that was interviewing him, how the book Crystallizing Public Opinion published by Bernays in 1923 had been used for the political campaigns of the Nazis. And so, for a peculiar paradox of history, a Jew has contributed to Hitler’s ascent to power. An episode that reveals how the weapon of communication, in all its forms, is a difficult tool and dangerous to handle, and its relapses on public opinion, especially in times of crisis, not always respond to expectations.»
Noam Chomsky has elaborated a list of the 10 manipulation strategies on mass media. Among these, the first one emerges: the strategy of distraction.
«The primordial element of social control is the strategy of distraction, which consists in diverting the attention of the audience from the important problems, and the changes decided by the political and economical élites, with the technique of flooding with continuous distractions and non significant information.»
The strategy of distraction is also indispensable to prevent the public from getting interested in essential knowledge, in the areas of science, economy, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. Maintaining the Attention of audience diverted from true social problems, imprisoned in topics of no true importance.
Maintaining the audience busy, busy, busy, without time to think, returning to the factory as the other animals (quoted in the text «Silent weapons for quiet wars»). As we assist to the sad shows of politics let’s ask ourselves who is in the strategic positions, who is behind the curtains, who has the true power. Otherwise voting is the same as falling in the deceit of distraction.