M Robert
M Robert
Aug 22, 2017 · 3 min read

Key proponents of oligarchical propaganda : Walter Lippman , Bertrand Russell:

“…..This public opinion and social control apparatus had its first U.S. incarnation in the racist Woodrow Wilson Administration following World War I.27 It is firmly rooted in the counterinsurgency methods of British colonialism. Harold Laswell and Walter Lippmann pioneered the conscious applications of these methods in the United States by building a social science army which experimented, profiled, and polled human populations while mastering propaganda techniques in order, in Lippmann’s words, to “manufacture” popular democratic consent.

Lippmann spent World War I at the British psychological warfare and propaganda headquarters in Wellington House, outside of London, in a group that included Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Eduard Bernays.28 In his book, Public Opinion, Lippman writes that it is through media, particularly modern mass communications like movies, that most people come to develop the “pictures in their heads” of themselves, of others, of their needs and purposes, and their relationships. He observes that people are more than willing to reduce complex problems to simplistic formulas, to form their opinion by what they believe others around them believe: Truth hardly enters into such considerations. Appearance of reports in the media confer the aura of reality upon those stories: If they weren’t factual, the average person believes, then why would they be reported?

People whose fame is built up by the media, such as movie stars, Lippmann argued, can become “opinion leaders,” with as much power to sway public opinion as political figures. He marveled at the power of movies. Words, or even a still picture, require an effort by a person to form a “picture in the mind.” But, with a movie, “the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and then imagining is accomplished for you. Without much more trouble than is needed to stay awake, the result which your imagination is always aiming at is reeled off the screen.” Significantly, he cites D.W. Griffith’s propaganda film for the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation, writing that no American will ever hear the name of the Klan again, “without seeing those white horsemen.”29

Popular opinion, Lippman writes, must ultimately be determined by the desires and wishes of an elite, rich, and superior social set, fundamentally international in scope, whose center is in London. But, the use of this instrument requires precision. “Public opinion must be organized for the press, not by the press.” The organizers must be a “specialized class” which operates through “intelligence bureaus.”

Similarly, Harold Laswell, who reviewed all propaganda efforts conducted by the state parties to World War I for his doctoral thesis, and was fascinated by the application of Freudian psychology to mass population control, wrote:

“The spread of literacy did not release the masses from ignorance and superstition but altered the nature of both and compelled the development of whole new techniques of control, largely through propaganda… [A propagandist’s] regard for men rests on no democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. The modern propagandist, like the modern psychologist, recognizes that men are poor judges of their own interest…[Those with power must cultivate] sensitiveness to those concentrations of motive which are implicit and available for rapid mobilizations when the appropriate symbol is offered… [The propagandist is] no phrasemonger but a promoter of overt acts.”30

In 1923 and 1943, Time magazine featured Benito Mussolini on its cover, and referred to him in articles as “Wonderful Benito.”

Lippman founded the New Republic magazine, deliberately modeled after the “Open Conspiracy” nostrums of H.G. Wells, and is considered to be the founder of modern journalism and communications theory.31 The U.S. studies in mass psychological manipulation in the inter-war period were almost entirely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, although not without some opposition. Donald Slesinger, former dean of the University of Chicago, described its ideas as using a democratic “guise” to “tacitly accept the objectives and methods of a new form of authoritarianism… We have thought about fighting dictatorships by force through the establishment of dictatorship by manipulation,” he said. Joseph Willits, a Rockefeller officer, described these ideas as frankly “fascist.”32

https://larouchepac.com/20170522/insurrection-against-president-or-who-really-george-soros-anyway

)
    M Robert

    Written by

    M Robert

    Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
    Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
    Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade