83 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
83 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
The Capitalist "Free Press:"
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... Today the press is still legally free; but most of the
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little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood-pulp, of modern
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printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the
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Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship,
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and the media of mass communication are controlled by the state.
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In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the
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media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power
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Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the concentration of
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communication power in the hands of a few big concerns is less
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objectionable than State ownership and government propaganda;
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but certainly it is not something of which a Jeffersonian
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democrat could possibly approve.
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In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal
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literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities:
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the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did
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not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western
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capitalist democracies -- the development of a vast mass
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communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the
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true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less
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totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account
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man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
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.... Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only
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those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can
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hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures.
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A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their
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time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable
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future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of
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sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy,
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will find it hard to resist the enroachments of those who
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would manipulate and control it.
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In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most
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part on repetition, suppression and rationalization -- the
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repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as
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true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be
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ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which
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may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As
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the art and science of manipulation come to be better
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understood, the dictators of the future will doubtless learn
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to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions
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which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea
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of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the
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maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of
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democratic institutions.
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Aldous Huxley, 1958
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- * -
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There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms
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should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing
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squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass
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deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about
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that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient and, in an age
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of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the
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Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be
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one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses
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and their army of managers control a population of slaves who
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do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
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To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day
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totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper
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editors, and school teachers.
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...[such propagandists] accomplish their greatest triumphs,
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not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great
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is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view,
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is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain
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subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion
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much more effectively than they could have done by the most
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eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical
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rebuttals.
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--- Aldous Huxley, in his 1946 revised
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forward to _Brave new world_
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