gat

particular culture it touches is degraded and insulted by the shallow veneer of universalism which
hides the politics of the thing.
7 If the article were written today, the magnitude of reduction would be to an Asian or "global" standard, I would
imagine.
8 Just how wide a gulf there is between propaganda and reality where economic globalism is the issue can be
gathered from a front-page article in the World Business section of March 7, 2003 New York Tines detailing
Australia’s "12th consecutive year of economic expansion" in the face of the dismal performance of other
industrialized economies. Australia’s secret, according to the text of "Australia keeps Bypassing Pitfalls of Global
Economy," is that Australia’s economy is not export-dependent, "domestic consumers are the main pillar of the
economy."
Freud’s Nephew
Early in the twentieth century, official language, including official school language, became a
deliberate, systematic exercise in illusion. Governments have always lied, of course, but at the
beginning of the twentieth century an accretion of psychological insights gathered from past
epochs of magic, theology, philosophy, arts, warfare, rumor, and madness, were collected,
codified, and the conclusions sold to the leaders of political states, global corporations, and other
powerful interests, welded into a technology of professionalized dishonesty. Secrets of crowd
behavior and the presumed instrumental wiring of human nature were made available to anyone
with the price of admission. The newly official pragmatic philosophy became a kind of
anti-morality, superior to any ethical code fashioned out of custom and philosophy.
Four hundred years after Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his treatise on scientific deceit, Edward L.
Bernays began to practice the scientific art of public deception, trading heavily on his uncle
Sigmund Freud’s notoriety. A decade earlier, Ivy Lee’s publicity savvy had rescued the
Rockefellers from their Ludlow Massacre disgrace. Public Relations as political science was off
and running on the fast track.
Bernays was only a solitary word magician at the time, of course, but he was in an ideal position
to capitalize quickly upon his rhetorical talent and to set his stamp on the new science’s future. In
1928, Bernays published two books in quick succession which planted his flag in the dream terrain
of the "unconscious." The first, Crystallizing Public Opinion, and the second, Propaganda. Adolf
Hitler is said to have displayed both on a table in his office under a poster-sized picture of Henry
Ford. 9 The new world was blazing a trail into an even newer world than it imagined. Both of
Bernays’ books argued that language could be used successfully to create new realities.
Psychological science was so advanced, he claimed, it could substitute synthetic reality for natural
reality, as urban society had successfully replaced our natural connection to birds, trees, and
flowers with a substitute connection to billboards, cars, and bright lights.
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