by DAVID CROMWELL
It is a historical fact that powerful elites do not wish to be diverted from pursuing their selfish interests by the public. Minimal, unthreatening expressions of dissent may be tolerated in ostensible ‘democracies’. But public opinion needs to be managed, manipulated or, if necessary, simply ignored.
After all, as Noam Chomsky has said, real ‘democracy is a threat to any power system’. He noted that Edward Bernays, one of the founders and leading figures of the huge public relations industry:
‘reminded his colleagues that with “universal suffrage and universal schooling… even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king.” That unfortunate tendency could be contained and reversed, he urged, by new methods of “propaganda” that could be used by “intelligent minorities” to “[regiment] the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.”’
(Preface to ‘The Myth of the Liberal Media’, Edward S. Herman, Peter Lang Publishing, 1999, pp. x-xi)
Elite shaping of public opinion is not 100 per cent foolproof, of course, but it is often highly effective. As Peter Beattie, an assistant professor in political economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, observed:
‘While the media is far from a brainwashing “influencing machine” or a hypodermic needle capable of injecting ideas into our minds, it is nonetheless the greatest influence on public opinion, as it is the conduit through which the building blocks of public opinion are transported.’
(Beattie, ‘Social Evolution, Political Psychology, and the Media in Democracy: The Invisible Hand in the U.S. Marketplace of Ideas’, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, p. 8)
In fact, one could argue that the media is ‘a brainwashing “influencing machine”’, as demonstrated, for example, by the power and success of the propaganda blitz against Jeremy Corbyn, and the deliberate conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism in establishment attempts to smear critics of Israel. However, if public opinion remains stubbornly immune from establishment pressure, it can simply be rejected or overridden.
Consider a YouGov poll last October showing that 66 per cent of the British public support reinstating public ownership of energy companies. Likewise, a 2022 survey by campaign group We Own It revealed that a majority want to see public ownership of utilities such as energy and water.
We Own It director Cat Hobbs said:
‘Privatisation has failed for nearly 40 years. Politicians can’t ignore the truth any longer: these monopolies are a cash cow for shareholders and we need to take them back.
‘We need energy companies that don’t rip us off, public transport that works for passengers and water companies that don’t pour sewage into our rivers.’
The poll also showed very strong support for public ownership of buses, the railways, the National Health Service and Royal Mail. These findings were echoed in an Ipsos poll last August.
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