AMERIKAN PROPAGANDA
AMERIKAN PROPAGANDA
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
Reception and Impact
Despite the relative significance of Propaganda to twentieth century media history and modern public relations, surprisingly little critique of the work exists. Public relations scholar Curt Olsen argues that the public largely accepted Bernays’ “sunny” view of propaganda, an acceptance eroded by fascism in the World War II era.[12] Olsen also argues that Bernays’s skill with language allowed terms such as “education” to subtly replace darker concepts such as “indoctrination.”[13] Finally, Olsen criticizes Bernays for advocating “psychic ease” for the average person to have no burden to answer for his or her own actions in the face of powerful messages.[14] On the other hand, writers such as Marvin Olasky justify Bernays as killing democracy in order to save it.[15] In this way, the presence of an elite, faceless persuasion constituted the only plausible way to prevent authoritarian control.[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)#Reception_and_Impact
* * * * *
Marvin Olasky is obviously insane. What he and Bernays advocate is the perfect definition of “authoritarian control”
Marvin Olasky (born June 12, 1950) is editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine, the author of more than 20 books, including Fighting for Liberty and Virtue and The Tragedy of American Compassion, and is a distinguished chair in journalism and public policy at Patrick Henry College.
Olasky was born in Malden, Massachusetts, United States, to a Russian-Jewish family. He graduated from Newton High School (now Newton North High School) in 1968 and from Yale University in 1971 with a B.A. in American studies.[2] In 1976 he earned his Ph.D. in American Culture at the University of Michigan.[2] He became an atheist in adolescence and a Marxist in college, ultimately joining the Communist Party USA in 1972.[2] He married and divorced during this period and by his own admission broke every one of the ten commandments except the one against murder. He left the Communist Party late in 1973 and in 1976 became a Christian after reading the New Testament and a number of Christian authors.[2]
Olasky was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1983 to 2007 and provost of The King’s College in New York City from 2007 to 2011. He is now dean at the World Journalism Institute and a senior fellow at the Acton Institute.[3][4] He joined World Magazine in 1990 and became its editor in 1994 and its editor-in-chief in 2001. Earlier, he was a reporter at the Boston Globe and a speechwriter at the Du Pont Company.[2] Since 1996 he has been a ruling elder within the Presbyterian Church in America.[5]
Olasky became provost of The King’s College in June 2007. On November 5, 2010, the college announced his resignation, saying he would “devote more time to his role as editor-in-chief of World magazine.”[6] In an online article at Christianity Today about the announcement, Olasky suggested the move was related to the recent hiring of Dinesh D’Souza as the college’s president: “‘It will come as no surprise to you that Dinesh D’Souza and I have different ideas about some things,” [Olasky] said in an e-mail to Christianity Today. ‘I’d like to leave it at that and not do an interview.’ In a blog post, WORLD publisher Nick Eicher said “there are no hard feelings” between Olasky and The King’s College.[7]
On August 22, 2011, Patrick Henry College announced Olasky’s appointment to its newly created distinguished chair in journalism and public policy beginning in the fall semester of 2011.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Olasky
Like most Neoconservatives Olasky was a Marxist Communist when young.
Leo Strauss was the neocon godfather, he was a German-American political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated from Germany to the United States.
The key Straussian concept is the Straussian text, which is a piece of philosophical writing that is deliberately written so that the average reader will understand it as saying one (“exoteric”) thing but the special few for whom it is intended will grasp its real (“esoteric”) meaning.
Strauss and Karl Popper
Strauss actively rejected Karl Popper’s views as illogical. He agreed with a letter of response to his request of Eric Voegelin to look into the issue. In the response, Voegelin wrote that studying Popper’s views was a waste of precious time, and “an annoyance”. Specifically about Open Society and Its Enemies and Popper’s understanding of Plato’s The Republic, after giving some examples, Voegelin wrote:
Popper is philosophically so uncultured, so fully a primitive ideological brawler, that he is not able even approximately to reproduce correctly the contents of one page of Plato. Reading is of no use to him; he is too lacking in knowledge to understand what the author says.[50]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana
https://hybridrogue1.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/911-false-flag-psyop/
https://willywhitten.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/9-11-simple-physics/
https://willywhitten.wordpress.com/2017/12/30/false-flag-psyop-9-11-vii/
https://hybridrogue1.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/compulsory-schooling-indoctrination/
Robert J. O’Neill is a former United States Navy sailor. A former U.S. Navy SEAL and special warfare operator, O’Neill has claimed to have fired the shot that killed Osama bin Laden during the raid on his Abbottabad compound on May 1, 2011.
>> O’Neill is a fucking liar. Osama bin Laden died in December of 2001. The official story of both 9/11 and the raid on his Abbottabad compound on May 1, 2011 are lies and propaganda perpetrated by the US government and it’s lacky mainstream press. YouTube is now the worst propaganda outfit on the planet, The channel allows no decent whatsoever. I myself was banned from commenting 2 years ago without warning.
US diplomat convicted over Iran-Contra appointed special envoy for Venezuela
Elliott Abrams, who was linked to failed coup against Chávez, to join Pompeo to urge security council to recognize Guaidó as head.
Abrams is widely remembered in Central America, but particularly from his time in the Reagan administration, when he tried to whitewash a massacre of a thousand men, women and children by US-funded death squads in El Salvador, when he was assistant secretary of state for human rights.
He shrugged off the reports as communist propaganda, and insisted: “The administration’s record in El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement.”
Abrams also helped organise the covert financing of Contra rebels in Nicaragua behind the back of Congress, which had cut off funding. He then lied to Congress about his role, twice. He pleaded guilty to both counts in 1991 but was pardoned by George HW Bush.
9/11: SIMPLE PHYSICS
© Willy Whitten 2018
NIST Fraud:
WTC Disaster Study – The specific objectives were:
[1] Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft and why and how WTC 7 collapsed;
https://www.nist.gov/topics/disaster-failure-studies/world-trade-center-disaster-study
NIST was mandated to “determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed” –They FAILED to do so
And they admitted it!
NIST: “We are Unable to Provide a Full Explanation of the Total Collapse”–Catherine S. Fletcher, Chief Management and Organization Division, NIST Sept. 27, 2007
“The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. For brevity in this report, this sequence is referred to as the “probable collapse sequence,” although it does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable. (p xxxvii/39 of Draft)”–NIST
“The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower.” BUT the “focus” of the investigation is NOT the “goal” of the investigation as stated in their own words: “Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft and why and how WTC 7 collapsed.”
This is spurious rhetorical sophistry in the guise of rational argumentation on the part of NIST.
NIST did not provide a full explanation as to why the WTC Towers collapsed. NIST modeled their CGI cartoons to the point that the building was “poised for collapse”, and left it at that, a glaring example of circular reasoning.
This is scientific fraud and nothing less.
. . . . . .
Each tower weighed about 500,000 tons. divide that by the number of floors and we have about 5,000 tons per floor.
Each tower had 100,000 tons of steel – divide that by number of floors, we have about 1,000 tons of steel per floor.
North Tower (WTC 1) at 8:46 am, impacting between the 93rd and 99th floors. Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 approached from the southwest, over New York Harbor, and crashed into the South Tower (WTC 2) southern facade at 9:03 am between the 77th and 85th floors at 540 miles per hour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center
. . . . . .
Disproving simple gravity collapse by simple math:
Each tower weighed about 500,000 tons. divide that by the number of floors and we have about 5,000 tons per floor.
North Tower (WTC 1) Planes impacted a span of 93rd and 99th floors. So the upper section would be about 16 floors. Multiply 16 x 5,000 = 80,000 tons verses 420,000 tons of remaining undamaged floors.
. . . . . . . . . .
Disproving simple gravity collapse by common sense
One can not presume that a cohesive block of intact material can exist acting as a pile driver can fall through the center of the buildings, when we can see with our own eyes that there is that amount of crushed and fragmented material blown horizontally beyond the frame of the buildings in all of the imagery available of the destruction of WTC 1&2.
I have already shown how elementary Newtonian physics precludes the possibility of a gravity driven collapse:
All progressive collapse theories defy Newtonian physics:
Newton’s third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Applying this principle to the collapse of the WTC Towers, it proves that the upper portion could only destroy the lower portion by the equal amount of the floors; That is if 12 floors are crushing the floors beneath them they can crush no more than 12 stories below. Simple physics.
What is the work done in ‘crushing’? It is smashing and destroying a material and objects. Equal and opposite crushing is crushing from above and equal crushing from below. ‘Crush up–Crush down’.
The material crushed in the interaction is equal. Therefore there is no material left to crush down after it is exhausted itself against the crush up.
Now all that is needed to fulfill my original assertion is physical proof of explosive material:
Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
Abstract:
“We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the
destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red material contains grains approximately 100 nm across which are largely iron oxide, while aluminum is contained in tiny plate-like structures. Separation of components using methyl ethyl ketone demonstrated that elemental aluminum is present. The iron oxide and aluminum are intimately mixed in the red material. When ignited in a DSC device the chips exhibit large but narrow exotherms occurring at approximately 430 ˚C, far below the normal ignition temperature for conventional thermite. Numerous iron-rich spheres are clearly observed in the residue following the ignition of these peculiar red/gray chips. The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.”
9/11: SIMPLE PHYSICS
© Willy Whitten 2018
NIST Fraud:
WTC Disaster Study – The specific objectives were:
[1] Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft and why and how WTC 7 collapsed;
https://www.nist.gov/topics/disaster-failure-studies/world-trade-center-disaster-study
NIST was mandated to “determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed” –They FAILED to do so
And they admitted it!
NIST: “We are Unable to Provide a Full Explanation of the Total Collapse”–Catherine S. Fletcher, Chief Management and Organization Division, NIST Sept. 27, 2007
“The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. For brevity in this report, this sequence is referred to as the “probable collapse sequence,” although it does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable. (p xxxvii/39 of Draft)”–NIST
“The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower.” BUT the “focus” of the investigation is NOT the “goal” of the investigation as stated in their own words: “Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft and why and how WTC 7 collapsed.”
This is spurious rhetorical sophistry in the guise of rational argumentation on the part of NIST.
NIST did not provide a full explanation as to why the WTC Towers collapsed. NIST modeled their CGI cartoons to the point that the building was “poised for collapse”, and left it at that, a glaring example of circular reasoning.
This is scientific fraud and nothing less.
. . . . . .
Each tower weighed about 500,000 tons. divide that by the number of floors and we have about 5,000 tons per floor.
Each tower had 100,000 tons of steel – divide that by number of floors, we have about 1,000 tons of steel per floor.
North Tower (WTC 1) at 8:46 am, impacting between the 93rd and 99th floors. Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 approached from the southwest, over New York Harbor, and crashed into the South Tower (WTC 2) southern facade at 9:03 am between the 77th and 85th floors at 540 miles per hour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center
. . . . . .
Disproving simple gravity collapse by simple math:
Each tower weighed about 500,000 tons. divide that by the number of floors and we have about 5,000 tons per floor.
North Tower (WTC 1) Planes impacted a span of 93rd and 99th floors. So the upper section would be about 16 floors. Multiply 16 x 5,000 = 80,000 tons verses 420,000 tons of remaining undamaged floors.
. . . . . . . . . .
Disproving simple gravity collapse by common sense
One can not presume that a cohesive block of intact material can exist acting as a pile driver can fall through the center of the buildings, when we can see with our own eyes that there is that amount of crushed and fragmented material blown horizontally beyond the frame of the buildings in all of the imagery available of the destruction of WTC 1&2.
I have already shown how elementary Newtonian physics precludes the possibility of a gravity driven collapse:
All progressive collapse theories defy Newtonian physics:
Newton’s third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Applying this principle to the collapse of the WTC Towers, it proves that the upper portion could only destroy the lower portion by the equal amount of the floors; That is if 12 floors are crushing the floors beneath them they can crush no more than 12 stories below. Simple physics.
What is the work done in ‘crushing’? It is smashing and destroying a material and objects. Equal and opposite crushing is crushing from above and equal crushing from below. ‘Crush up–Crush down’.
The material crushed in the interaction is equal. Therefore there is no material left to crush down after it is exhausted itself against the crush up.
Now all that is needed to fulfill my original assertion is physical proof of explosive material:
Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
Abstract:
“We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the
destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red material contains grains approximately 100 nm across which are largely iron oxide, while aluminum is contained in tiny plate-like structures. Separation of components using methyl ethyl ketone demonstrated that elemental aluminum is present. The iron oxide and aluminum are intimately mixed in the red material. When ignited in a DSC device the chips exhibit large but narrow exotherms occurring at approximately 430 ˚C, far below the normal ignition temperature for conventional thermite. Numerous iron-rich spheres are clearly observed in the residue following the ignition of these peculiar red/gray chips. The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.”
Karl Popper
Austrian-British philosopher
Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRS was an Austrian-British philosopher and professor. Generally regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. Wikipedia
Born: July 28, 1902, Vienna, Austria
Died: September 17, 1994, Kenley, United Kingdom
Influenced: Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, George Soros,
Influenced by: Ludwig Wittgenstein, René Descartes,
Quotes
“It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.”
“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.”
“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
Popper is best known for his critique of totalitarianism and his defense of freedom, individualism, democracy and an “open society.” His political thought resides squarely within the camp of Enlightenment rationalism and humanism. He was a dogged opponent of totalitarianism, nationalism, fascism, romanticism, collectivism, and other kinds of (in Popper’s view) reactionary and irrational ideas.
Popper’s rejection of these ideas was anchored in a critique of the philosophical beliefs that, he argued, underpinned them, especially a flawed understanding of the scientific method. This approach is what gives Popper’s political thought its particular philosophical interest and originality—and its controversy, given that he locates the roots of totalitarianism in the ideas of some of the West’s most esteemed philosophers, ancient as well as modern. His defense of a freed and democratic society stems in large measure from his views on the scientific method and how it should be applied to politics, history and social science. Indeed, his most important political texts—The Poverty of Historicism (1944) and The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)—offer a kind of unified vision of science and politics. As explained below, the people and institutions of the open society that Popper envisioned would be imbued with the same critical spirit that marks natural science, an attitude which Popper called critical rationalism. This openness to analysis and questioning was expected to foster social and political progress as well as to provide a political context that would allow the sciences to flourish.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/popp-pol/
Hegel, Marx and Modern Historicism
History was central to both Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophy, and for Popper their ideas exemplified historicist thinking and the political dangers that it entailed. Hegel’s historicism was reflected in his view that the dialectal interaction of ideas was the motor of history. The evolution and gradual improvement of philosophical, ethical, political and religious ideas determines the march of history, Hegel argued. History, which Hegel sometimes described as the gradual unfolding of “Reason,” comes to an end when all the internal contradictions in human ideas are finally resolved.
Marx’s historical materialism famously inverted Hegel’s philosophy. For Marx, history was a succession of economic and political systems, or “modes of production” in Marx’s language. As technological innovations and new ways of organizing production led to improvements in a society’s capacity to meet human material needs, new modes of production would emerge. In each new mode of production, the political and legal system, as well as the dominant moral and religious values and practices, would reflect the interests of those who controlled the new productive system. Marx believed that the capitalist mode of production was the penultimate stage of human history. The productive power unleashed by new technologies and factory production under capitalism was ultimately incompatible with capitalism as an economic and political system, which was marked by inefficiency, instability and injustice. Marx predicted that these flaws would inevitably lead to revolution followed by establishment of communist society. This final stage of human development would be one of material abundance and true freedom and equality for all.
According to Popper, though they disagreed on the mechanism that directed human social evolution, both Hegel and Marx, like Plato, were historicists because they believed that trans-historical laws governed human history. This was the key point for Popper, as well as the key error and danger.
The deep methodological flaw of historicism, according to Popper, is that historicists wrongly see the goal of social science as historical forecast—to predict the general course of history. But such prediction is not possible, Popper said. He provided two arguments that he said demonstrated its impossibility. The first was a succinct logical argument: Human knowledge grows and changes overtime, and knowledge in turn affects social events. (That knowledge might be, for example, a scientific theory, a social theory, or an ethical or religious idea.) We cannot predict what we will know in the future (otherwise we would already know it), therefore we cannot predict the future. As long as it is granted that knowledge affects social behavior and that knowledge changes overtime—two premises that Popper considered incontestable—then the view that we can predict the future cannot be true and historicism must be rejected. This argument, it should be noted, also reflected Popper’s judgment that the universe is nondeterministic: that is, he believed that prior conditions and the laws of nature do not completely causally determine the future, including human ideas and actions. Our universe is an “open” universe, he said.
Popper’s second argument against the possibility of historical forecasting focused on the role of laws in social explanations. According to Popper, historicists wrongly believe that genuine social science must be a kind of “theoretical history” in which the aim is to uncover laws of historical development that explain and predict the course of history (Poverty of Historicism, 39). But Popper contended that this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of scientific laws. In fact, Popper argued, there is no such thing as a law of historical development. That is, there are no trans-historical laws that determine the transition from one historical period to the next. Failure to understand why this is so represented a deep philosophical error. There may be sociological laws that govern human behavior within particular social systems or institutions, Popper said. For instance, the laws of supply and demand are kinds of social laws governing market economies. But the future course of history cannot be predicted and, in particular, laws that govern the general trajectory of history do not exist. Popper does not deny that there can be historical trends—a tendency towards greater freedom and equality, more wealth or better technology, for instance, but unlike genuine laws, trends are always dependent upon conditions. Change the conditions and the trends may alter or disappear. A trend towards greater freedom or knowledge could be disrupted by, say, the outbreak of a pandemic disease or the emergence of a new technology that facilitates authoritarian regimes. Popper acknowledges that in certain cases natural scientists can predict the future—even the distance future—with some confidence, as is the case with astronomy, for instance. But this type of successful long-range forecasting can occur only in physical systems that are “well-isolated, stationary and recurrent,” such as the solar system (Conjectures and Refutations, 339). Social systems can never be isolated and stationary, however.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/popp-pol/#SH1c
Utopian Social Engineering
So historicism as social science is deeply defective, according to Popper. But he also argued that it was politically dangerous and that this danger stemmed from historicism’s natural and close allegiance with what Popper called “utopian social engineering.” Such social planning “aims at remodeling the ‘whole of society’ in accordance with a definite plan or blueprint,” as opposed to social planning that aims at gradual and limited adjustments. Popper admitted that the alliance between historicism and utopian engineering was “somewhat strange” (Poverty of Historicism, 73). Because historicists believe that laws determine the course of history, from their vantage it is ultimately pointless to try to engineer social change. Just as a meteorologist can forecast the weather, but not alter it, the same holds for social scientists, historicists believe. They can predict future social developments, but not cause or alter them. Thus “out-and-out historicism” is against utopian planning—or even against social planning altogether (Open Society Vol. 1, 157). For this reason Marx rejected attempts to design a socialist system; in fact he derided such projects as “utopian.” Nonetheless, the connection between historicism and utopian planning remains strong, Popper insisted. Why?
First, historicism and utopian engineering share a connection to utopianism. Utopians seek to establish an ideal state of some kind, one in which all conflicts in social life are resolved and ultimate human ends—for example, freedom, equality, true happiness—are somehow reconciled and fully realized. Attaining this final goal requires radical overhaul of the existing social world and thus naturally suggests the need for utopian social engineering. Many versions of historicism are thus inclined towards utopianism. As noted above, both Marx’s and Hegel’s theory of history, for instance, predict an end to history in which all social contradictions will be permanently resolved. Second, historicism and utopian social engineering both tend to embrace holism. Popper said that historicists, like utopian engineers, typically believe that “society as a whole” is the proper object of scientific inquiry. For the historicist, society must be understood in terms of social wholes, and to understand the deep forces that move the social wholes, you must understand the laws of history. Thus the historicists’ anticipation of the coming utopia, and their knowledge of the historical tendencies that will bring it about, may tempt them to try to intervene in the historical process and therefore, as Marx said, “lessen the birth pangs” associated with the arrival of the new social order. So while a philosophically consistent historicism might seem to lead to political quiescence, the fact is that historicists often cannot resist political engagement. In addition, Popper noted that even less radical versions of historicism, such as Plato’s, permit human intervention.
Popper argued that utopian engineering, though superficially attractive, is fatally flawed: it invariably leads to multitudinous unintended and usually unwelcome consequences. The social world is so complex, and our understanding of it so incomplete, that the full impact of any imposed change to it, especially grand scale change, can never be foreseen. But, because of their unwarranted faith in their historical prophesies, the utopian engineers will be methodologically ill equipped to deal with this reality. The unintended consequences will be unanticipated, and he or she will be forced to respond to them in a haphazard and ill-informed manner: “[T]he greater the holistic changes attempted, the greater are their unintended and largely unexpected repercussions, forcing on the holistic engineer the expedient of piecemeal improvisation” or the “notorious phenomenon of unplanned planning” (Poverty of Historicism, 68-69). One particularly important cause of unintended consequences that utopian engineers are generally blind to is what Popper called the “human factor” in all institutional design. Institutions can never wholly govern individuals’ behavior, he said, as human choice and human idiosyncrasies will ensure this. Thus no matter how thoroughly and carefully an institution is designed, the fact that institutions are filled with human beings results in a certain degree of unpredictability in their operation. But the historicists’ holism leads them to believe that individuals are merely pawns in the social system, dragged along by larger social forces outside their control. The effect of the human factor is that utopian social engineers inevitably are forced, despite themselves, to try to alter human nature itself in their bid to transform society. Their social plan “substitutes for [the social engineers’] demand that we build a new society, fit for men and women to live in, the demand that we ‘mould’ these men and women to fit into this new society” (Poverty of Historicism, 70).
Achieving such molding requires awesome and total power and thus in this way utopian engineering naturally tends toward the most severe authoritarian dictatorship. But this is not the only reason that utopian engineering and tyranny are allied. The central planning that it requires invariably concentrates power in the hands of the few, or even the one. This is why even utopian projects that officially embrace democracy tend towards authoritarianism. Authoritarian societies are in turn hostile to any public criticism, which deprives the planners of needed feedback about the impact of their policies, which further undermines the effectiveness of utopian engineering. In addition, Popper argued that the utopian planners’ historicism makes them indifferent to the misery that their plans cause. Having uncovered what they believe is inevitable en route to utopia, they all too easily countenance any suffering as a necessary part of that process, and, moreover, they will be inclined to see such suffering as outweighed by the benefits that will flow to all once utopia is reached.
Popper’s discussion of utopian engineering and its link to historicism is highly abstract. His criticisms are generally aimed at “typical” historicists and utopian planners, rather than actual historical or contemporary figures. This reluctance to name names is somewhat surprising, given that Popper himself later stated that the political disasters of the 1930s and 40s were the impetus for his foray into political philosophy. Exactly whom did Popper think was guilty of social science malpractice? A contemporary reader with a passing familiarity with 20th-century history is bound to suppose that Popper had in mind the horrors of the Soviet Union when he discussed utopian planning. Indeed, the attempts to transform the Soviet Union into a modern society—the “five year plans,” rapid industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, and so forth—would seem to feature all the elements of utopian engineering. They were fueled by Marxist historicism and utopianism, centrally planned, aimed at wholesale remodeling of Russian society, and even sought to create a new type of person—“New Soviet Man”—through indoctrination and propaganda. Moreover, the utopian planning had precisely the pernicious effects that Popper predicted. The Soviet Union soon morphed into a brutal dictatorship under Stalin, criticism of the leadership and their programs was ruthlessly suppressed, and the various ambitious social projects were bedeviled by massive unintended consequences. The collectivization of agriculture, for instance, led to a precipitous drop in agricultural production and some 10 million deaths, partly from the unintended consequence of mass starvation and partly from the Soviet leaders’ piecemeal improvisation of murdering incorrigible peasants. However, when writing Poverty and The Open Society, Popper regarded the Soviet experiments, at least the early ones, as examples of piecemeal social planning rather than the utopian kind. His optimistic assessment is no doubt explained partly by his belief at the time that the Russian revolution was a progressive event, and he was thus reluctant to criticize the Soviet Union (Hacohen, 396-397). In any event, the full horrors of the Soviet social experiments were not yet known to the wider world. In addition, the Soviets during the Second World War were part of the alliance against fascism, which Popper saw as a much greater threat to humanity. In fact, initially Popper viewed totalitarianism as an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. However, he later became a unambiguous opponent of Soviet-style communism, and he dedicated the 1957 publication in book form of The Poverty of Historicism to the “memory of the countless men, women and children of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.”
2. Freedom, Democracy and the Open Society
Having uncovered what he believed were the underlying psychological forces abetting totalitarianism (the strain of civilization) as well as the flawed philosophical ideas (historicism, holism and essentialism), Popper provided his own account of the values and institutions needed to sustain an open society in the contemporary world. He viewed modern Western liberal democracies as open societies and defended them as “the best of all political worlds of whose existence we have any historical knowledge” (All Life Is Problem Solving, 90). For Popper, their value resided principally in the individual freedom that they permitted and their ability to self-correct peacefully over time. That they were democratic and generated great prosperity was merely an added benefit. What gives the concept of an open society its interest is not so much the originality of the political system that Popper advocated, but rather the novel grounds on which he developed and defended this political vision. Popper’s argument for a free and democratic society is anchored in a particular epistemology and understanding of the scientific method. He held that all knowledge, including knowledge of the social world, was conjectural and that freedom and social progress ultimately depended upon the scientific method, which is merely a refined and institutionalized process of trial and error. Liberal democracies in a sense both embodied and fostered this understanding of knowledge and science.
a. Minimalist Democracy
Popper’s view of democracy was simple, though not simplistic, and minimalist. Rejecting the question Who should rule? as the fundamental question of political theory, Popper proposed a new question: “How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?” (Open Society Vol. 1, 121). This is fundamentally a question of institutional design, Popper said. Democracy happens to be the best type of political system because it goes a long way toward solving this problem by providing a nonviolent, institutionalized and regular way to get rid of bad rulers—namely by voting them out of office. For Popper, the value of democracy did not reside in the fact that the people are sovereign. (And, in any event, he said, “the people do not rule anywhere, it is always governments that rule” [All Life Is Problem Solving, 93]). Rather, Popper defended democracy principally on pragmatic or empirical grounds, not on the “essentialist” view that democracy by definition is rule by the people or on the view that there is something intrinsically valuable about democratic participation. With this move, Popper is able to sidestep altogether a host of traditional questions of democratic theory, e.g.. On what grounds are the people sovereign? Who, exactly, shall count as “the people”? How shall they be represented? The role of the people is simply to provide a regular and nonviolent way to get rid of incompetent, corrupt or abusive leaders.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/popp-pol/#SH1c
American Coup (2010)
1h 38min | Documentary, History, News | 9 November 2010 (USA)
AMERICAN COUP tells the story of the first coup ever carried out by the CIA – Iran, 1953. Explores the blowback from this seminal event, as well as the coup’s lingering effects on the present US-Iranian relationship. Includes a segment on the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis and its relation to the 1953 coup. Concludes with a section on the recent Iranian presidential election. Contains interviews with noted Middle East experts and historians and prominent public figures such as Stephen Kinzer (author, All The Shah’s Men), Prof. Ervand Abrahamian, Trita Parsi, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Ted Koppel and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. With Iranian cinematography by James Longley.
“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.”~ Harry S. Truman