More recently the Pentagon (there is now a Pentagon Channel) and FBI have established their own public relations divisions to promote popular support for both militarism and repressive police and intelligence measures that suppress popular opposition to these goals (http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2010/02/28/pentagon-and-fbi-propaganda/).
This is not a simple matter of inserting anti-terrorist and pro-war messages into the nightly news. The Pentagon, FBI and CIA propaganda divisions all play an active role consulting to Hollywood and even coming up with script ideas for crime and spy movies and TV series.
Specific "Do Nothing" Messages
In addition to obvious pro-military messages, the pro-corporate public relations industry also churns out a large quantity of "do nothing" messages (also known as memes) that discourage Americans from playing an active role in the political process. These are the specific messages that I believe are so detrimental to grassroots organizing in the US :
1. Politics and economics are for too complicated for ordinary people to understand. Americans' proper political role is to choose wise political (and labor and community) leaders and leave the important decisions to them.
2. Americans already have to work too hard to make ends meet. They have to think of their children and families and not waste time at union and/or community meetings and protests.
3. Class differences have been abolished in the US . Everyone with a full time job is automatically "middle class." This, by definition, means their interests lie with the corporate elite -- which leaves them nothing to complain or protest about.
4. The US and Americans are distinctly different (better) than the rest of the world and all obstacles can be overcome by individual effort. People who blame social conditions for their difficulties are just whiners.
5. There is no alternative -- corporations, corporate controlled government and the corporate controlled media are all too powerful for ordinary people to bring about change. Organizing is pointless because we are helpless to change anything.
Overcoming Systematic Ideological Conditioning
I would be very foolish to pretend to have the answer to a dilemma that has plagued two generations of progressive activists. All I can offer is observations from thirty years experience helping individuals with personal change:
1. The ideological conditioning the PR industry has foisted on us is skin deep. Human beings are social animals and hard wired to crave social interaction and to live in community. Because of their biological programming, this is the setting in which they are happiest and achieve their fullest individual potential. Moreover no psychological conditioning can erase the scars of repression, exploitation and abuse, which nearly all of us have experienced at some point in our lives. This is so close to the surface in most people that twenty minutes of heart-to-heart conversation can bring it out.
2. Organizing, especially with people from different backgrounds, needs to be approached with humility and open mindedness. No one individual or group has a monopoly on the best approach to bringing about political change, and we need to respect the differing backgrounds and cultures of our fellow activists. Organizers from upper middle class backgrounds, especially, need to be aware that their working class has their own culture, which has a profound effect on their world view (http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2010/10/25/working-class-culture/).
3. I have come to agree with Derrick Jensen, Ra Goddess and Alex Knight (http://endofcapitalism.com/) that "healing" will be central to all organizing, as we leave behind our isolated, alienated selves. Owing to three generations of heavy brainwashing to condition us to tolerate a society based on violence, repression and abuse, we are all damaged goods. We need to allow for this in all our interactions.
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