Ray Bradbury

1
Ray Bradbury

• Fahrenheit 451
• Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon
  is to a totalitarian state. Chomsky, 1991

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It was a pleasure to burn.
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The Cold War (1945-1990)

• The Cold War (c. 1945-1990) was the open yet
  restricted rivalry that developed after World War
  II between groups of Communist and non-Communist
  nations. The term was first used by the American
  financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch
  during a congressional debate in 1947.
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.)
  and its Communist allies, the Eastern bloc (Boris
  and Natasha)
• United States and its democratic allies, usually
  referred to as the Western bloc.

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• The Cold War was a period of East-West
  competition, tension, and conflict short of
  full-scale war, characterized by mutual
  perceptions of hostile intention between
  military-political alliances or blocs.
• There were real wars, sometimes called "proxy
  wars" because they were fought by Soviet allies
  rather than the USSR itself -- along with
  competition for influence in the Third World, and
  a major superpower arms race.
• Afghanistan (1980s), Vietnam, Korea

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The Korean War

• The Korean War, June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953
• Communist North versus anti-communist South
  Korea. It was also a proxy war between the United
  States and the Soviet Union.
• Principal combatants were North and South Korea,
  the United States, Australia, Canada, the United
  Kingdom, and the People's Republic of China,
  although many other nations sent troops under the
  aegis of the United Nations. The Soviet Union
  also supplied combat advisors and aircraft
  pilots, in addition to arms, for the Chinese and
  North Korean troops. In US parlance Korea was
  officially a police action, not a war.

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The Vietnam War

• The Vietnam War 1964 1975
• War was fought South Vietnam and bordering areas
  of Cambodia and Laos, and in bombing runs
  (Rolling Thunder) over North Vietnam.
• A coalition of forces including the Republic of
  Vietnam (South Vietnam or the "RVN"), the United
  States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New
  Zealand, and the Philippines fought against a
  coalition of forces including the Democratic
  Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the
  National Liberation Front (NLF) also known as the
  Viet Cong, a South Vietnamese guerrilla movement.
  
• The USSR and People's Republic of China provided
  military aid to the North Vietnamese and to the
  NLF, but they were not military combatants. The
  war was part of a larger regional conflict
  involving the neighboring countries of Cambodia
  and Laos, known as the Second Indochina War. In
  Vietnam, this conflict is known as the American
  War (Vietnamese Chiên Tranh Chông My Cuu
  Nuoc, literally War Against the Americans to
  Save the Nation).

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Afghanistan

• The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was a
  10-year war which wreaked incredible havoc and
  destruction on Afghanistan.
• The 'shooting' war is generally held to have
  started December 24, 1979. Soviet troops
  ultimately withdrew from the area between May 15,
  1988 and February 2, 1989.
• The war was regarded by many as an unprovoked
  invasion of a sovereign country by another. The
  United Nations General Assembly passed United
  Nations Resolution 37/37 on November 29, 1982,
  which stated that the Soviet Union forces should
  withdraw from Afghanistan. However, others
  supported the Soviet Union, regarding it as
  coming to the rescue of an impoverished ally, or
  as a pre-emptive war against Islamist terrorists.
  
• The CIA invested US2.1 billion over a 10-year
  period to create an anti-Soviet resistance
  including funding and training Al Queda leaders.

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The Berlin Wall

• The Berlin Wall (German Berliner Mauer) was a
  long wall isolating West Berlin from East Berlin
  and the surrounding territory of East Germany. It
  existed from 1961 until 1989.
• After World War II, Berlin was divided into four
  sectors. The Soviet Union, the USA, the United
  Kingdom and France each had a portion of the city
  under their control. The Soviet sector was by far
  the largest and covered most of eastern Berlin
  Friedrichshain, Köpenick, Lichtenberg, Mitte,
  Pankow, Prenzlauer Berg, Treptow, and Weißensee.
• From 1949 the three sectors controlled by the
  United States, Britain and France (West Berlin),
  although nominally independent, were in effect a
  part of West Germany that was completely
  surrounded by East Germany.
• Initially the citizens of Berlin were allowed to
  freely move between all the sectors, but as the
  Cold War developed movement became restricted
  the border between East and West Germany was
  closed in 1952. Around 2.5 million East Germans
  crossed into the West between 1949 and 1961.
• The Wall stood as an important cold ward symbol.

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Symbol of Repression

• Construction of a wall around the three western
  sectors began on August 13, 1961, East Berlin. It
  first consisted of barbed wire, which was later
  replaced by the actual wall. The wall physically
  divided the city as it completely surrounded
  West Berlin, it effectively turned the western
  sectors into an island in the eastern
  territories.

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Berlin Wall 1989
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The Fall of the Wall- 1989

• Mass demonstrations against the government in
  East Germany began in the fall of 1989.
• The fall of the wall was the first step to the
  reunification of Germany, which was formally
  concluded on October 3, 1990.

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The Cold War

• Noam Chomsky speaking on the Cold War.
• Think about how these ideas are manifest in F.
  451?
• How is it operating today?

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Brainwashing at Home

• National security was not the central concern of
  US planners and elected officials.
• Few serious analysts took issue with George
  Kennan's position that "it is not Russian
  military power which is threatening us, it is
  Russian political power" (October 1947).
• President Eisenhower's consistent view that the
  Russians intended no military conquest of Western
  Europe and that the major role of NATO was to
  "convey a feeling of confidence to exposed
  populations, a confidence which will make them
  sturdier, politically, in their opposition to
  Communist inroads."

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• So it was the hand that started it all . . . His
  hands had been infected, and soon it would be his
  arms . . . His hands were ravenous.

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Manufacturing Consent

• The Propaganda Model- the workings of the media
  serve to mobilize public support for the special
  interests that dominate state and private
  activity, and that their choices, emphases, and
  omissions can often be understood best by
  analyzing them in such terms.
• There is a focus on inequality in wealth and
  power, and its multi-level effects on mass media
  interests and choices.

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People dont talk about anything.
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Ingredients of the Propaganda Model

• 1) The size, concentrated ownership, owner
  wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant
  mass media firms
• 2) Advertising as the primary income source of
  the mass media
• 3) the reliance of the media on information
  provided by government, business, and experts
  funded and approved by these primary sources and
  agents of power
• 4) Flak- as a means of disciplining the media
• 5) Anticommunism as a national religion and
  control mechanism
• How does that function today?

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Media Conglomeration

• Media companies have become part of much larger
  corporations which own a collection of other
  companies that may operate in highly diverse
  business areas.
• concentration of media ownership means fewer
  corporations own the media and increasingly fewer
  conglomerates own these corporations.
• Bagdikian argues in 1996 only 10 national and
  multi-national corporations dominated the mass
  communication industry.
• Three companies- Time Warner, Hearst and Advance
  Publications account for over half of the more
  than 11 billion in annual advertising revenue
• 75 of domestic box office gross for movies for
  1998 came from just 5 companies. In addition,
  many independent film companies ie. Miramax
  (Disney) and New Line (Time Warner) are owned by
  media conglomerates.
• Only five companies account for more than 3/4 of
  music sales in the U.S.- Seagrams Universal,
  Sonly, Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and EMI

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Advertising as a Source of Revenue

• Sut Jhally describes advertising as Advertising
  is the main weapon that manufacturers use in
  their attempt to produce an adequate consuming
  market for the products. To this end advertising
  works to create false needs in people (false
  because the are the needs of the manufacturers
  rather than the consumers).

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Reliance on Official Sources

• Increasingly news is produced after obtaining it
  from official government sources. The beat
  reporter, the muckracker is becoming obsolete.
• The problem There are no checks, or alternative
  sources. The relationship between government and
  business is problematic.

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Flak

• The media can be brought into line by business
  interests.
• Rupert Murdoch uses his company to advance his
  political and economic goals in Australia. ie.
  1998 directed HarperCOllins to cancel the
  publication of a book by Chris Patton the last
  British governor of Hong Kong because his
  criticisms of government were antithetical to
  Murdochs business interests.
• He also stopped production on a movie Strange
  Justice about Anita Hill because Thomas is an
  ally of Murdoch.
• The microsoft monopoly was not broken up and most
  of the sanctions imposed were reduced yet no
  outcry ensued.

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Anti-Communism to Anti-Terrorism

• Voices of dissent are recategorized as evil
  incarnate. The crimes of a few are used to taint
  ideologies that may offer valid critiques of
  existing power structures.

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"Come unto Me, Ye Opprest!"Literary Digest,
7/5/19.
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The Effects of the Propaganda Model

• These filters narrow the range of news that
  passes through the gates and limits the big news
  subjects.

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McCarthyism and The Red Scare

• Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a little-known
  junior senator from Wisconsin until February 1950
  when he claimed to possess a list of 205
  card-carrying Communists employed in the U.S.
  Department of State. 
• A tireless crusader against Communism in the
  early 1950s, a period that has been commonly
  referred to as the "Red Scare."  As chairman of
  the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee,
  Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on communist
  subversion in America and investigated alleged
  communist infiltration of the Armed Forces.  His
  subsequent exile from politics coincided with a
  conversion of his name into a modern English noun
  "McCarthyism," or adjective, "McCarthy tactics,"
  when describing similar witch-hunts in recent
  American history.
• Accusations were often unfounded and used as a
  means of preventing dissent.

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• Play the man, Master Ridley we shall this day
  light such a candle, by Gods grace, in England,
  as I trust shall never be put out. Latimer to
  Ridley before being burned for heresy, October
  16, 1555. Note that it is Beatty is the one who
  reveals this. Beatty has a tremendous knowledge
  of literature.
  
  
  
  
  

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• Walter Lippman- refers to the special importance
  of propaganda as the manufacture of consent.
• It is the Regular organ of popular government.

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Chomsky- The Spectacular Achievements of
Propaganda

• Problems of Democracy
• Democracy as the public has the means to
  participate in some meaningful way in the
  management of their own affairs and the means of
  information are open and free.
• Democracy as the public must be barred from
  managing of their own affairs and the means of
  information must be kept narrowly and rigidly
  controlled.

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Government and Propaganda

• Creel Commission 1916- turned a pacifist
  population into a hysterical, war mongering
  population which wanted to destroy everything
  German...
• Similar techniques used for Red Scare- used to
  destroy labor unions, limiting freedom of the
  press and freedom from political thought.
• U.S. taught the world that State propaganda,
  when supported by the educated classes and when
  no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big
  effect.
• -Lippmann- propaganda can be used to manufacture
  consent
• Seen as necessary
• View of democracy as public managed by a class of
  elites (specialized class of responsible men)

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Lippmanns Theory of Progressive Democracy

• Two classes of citizens
• The Specialized Classes
• The Bewildered Herd

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The Specialized Classes

• Takes an active role in running general affairs.
  
• Analyze, execute, make decisions, and run things
  in the political, economic, and ideological
  system.
• Their function is to carry out social action.
• They do the thinking and planning, decide on the
  common interest

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The Bewildered Herd

• The majority of the population. They are allowed
  to lend their weight to members of the
  specialized class, as in representative
  democracy.
• It is assumed that the public is stupid to be
  able to understand things.
• Consent from the bewildered herd must be
  manufactured. Because, there is a paradox
  created by the herds consent acting as the
  source of power, for elites who are largely
  unconcerned with the needs of people.
• How are beliefs and doctrines that will serve the
  interests of private power instilled?
• How are values that serve the interest of power
  indoctrinated?
• How to keep them as spectators, rather than
  acting?
• These machinations are justified by arguing that
  most people are emotional rather than rational,
  and need to be given necessary illusions and
  emotionally potent oversimplifications

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The Success of Public Relations

• Most of us are labor, yet the last major labor
  victory was the first- The Wagner Act- in 1935-
  gave labor the right to organize.
• Propaganda recast labor as unreasonable, corrupt,
  communist and so forth.

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Effective Propaganda

• Effective propaganda is centered around slogans
  that nobody can be against, because they dont
  mean anything.
• It operates to divert your attention from
  questions which do mean something.
• They hate us because were free.
• In the name of God, country and humankind

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The Use of Fear

• Fear of communism, fascism, and the atomic bomb
  kept citizens supporting foreign policy that was
  problematic.
• How does fear operate today?

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Bread and Circus

• Dan Rathers Description of news today The
  Hollywoodization of the news is deep and abiding.
  Its been one of the more important developments
  of the last 20-25 years, partuclarly the last
  10-15, that we run stupid celebrity stories...It
  has become pervasive, the belief that to be
  competitive, you must run a certain amount of
  celebrity news.

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• Not everyone born free and equal, as the
  Constitution says, but everyone made equal.  Each
  man the image of every other then all are happy,
  for there are no mountains to make them cower, to
  judge themselves against.