From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Mar 27 2006 - 08:01:35 EST
> Perhaps I should add that, through the media, we are also constantly faced > with social phenomena that we have no personal experience of, making it > more difficult to evaluate them objectively or rationally, other than "by > analogy" with things that we do have experience of. But I think the > argument I made is basically correct, at least, in my experience it is. A > majority of Americans seem to have very little notion of the rest of the >world. Hi Jurriaan, I agree with the last sentence but think it rather undercuts your claim that "people are normally pretty rational about the most important practical issues in their lives, and very resistant to propaganda which does not accord with their real experience of life ....". Since there is little knowledge by US citizens about the rest of the world (itself a _result_ of the ideological role of the media, educational institutions, state agencies, etc.) that makes them _more_ liable to accept pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist nationalistic propaganda. For instance -- even though a large percentage of the working class opposes the war -- a large percentage of US workers support the war in Iraq. Yet, very clearly, propaganda and deception was a means through which Bush built popular support for the war. Mass fear didn't just happen, it was created by the state and other bourgeois social institutions. Indeed, one could claim that while new communication technologies make an expansion of knowledge among the working class possible, some of those same technologies have become a new medium for deception and the creation or reproduction of irrational fears. What happened post 9-11 was an example of manipulation of popular opinion through the creation of mass fear and hysteria. In solidarity, Jerry
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