Public Opinion and Imperialism

By Prabhat Patnaik

A New York Times News Service report reproduced in The Telegraph of Kolkata (May 7), discusses the findings of a global public opinion survey carried out by the Bennett Institute of Public Policy of Cambridge University. These show that the Ukraine conflict had shifted public sentiment “in developed democracies in East Asia and Europe as well as the United States of America, uniting their citizens against both Russia and China and shifting mass opinion in a more pro-American direction”; by contrast “outside this democratic bloc, the trends were very different”. For a decade before the Ukraine war, public opinion across a vast span of countries stretching from continental Eurasia to the north and west of Africa, had become more favourable to Russia even as western public opinion became more hostile; the Ukraine war apparently has made little difference to this fact. And the same is also true of public opinion vis-à-vis China.

While this divergence between people’s sympathies in the two parts of the world is striking, the explanation offered for it in the report is quite banal: it points to what it calls a “divergence in fundamental values”. It is not only the “oppressive” and “authoritarian regimes” of the developing world whose perceptions differ from those of the “democratic and liberal” advanced countries; even the peoples of the former appear to be unsympathetic to western powers, and this is because they have very different fundamental values. The people of the third world in other words are not with the west because they have values that do not appreciate the importance of democracy, civil liberties, secularism, and so on, which is why they support Russia and China.

The corollary drawn for US foreign policy is that it should woo, rather than shun, third world “illiberal” regimes like those in Turkey or India. The suggestion is that such regimes, while differing from western values, are generally in sync with the mood of third world peoples.

What this analysis ignores is that the US has never shunned such regimes anyway; besides, it is a calumny to suggest that the values of the people of the third world are in sync with such regimes. In fact, on the contrary, whenever they have elected regimes that work on their behalf, to further their interests, the US has worked directly or indirectly to topple such popularly-elected democratic regimes through promoting revolts or coup de etats. The examples of Guatemala (Arbenz), Iran (Mossadegh), Indonesia (Soekarno), Chile (Allende), Brazil (Goulart), Congo (Lumumba), Burkina Fasso (Sankara) are just a few that immediately come to mind; in addition it has directly or indirectly supported the assassination of popular leaders who were leading their peoples to national liberation, leaders such as Eduardo Mondlane, Amilcar Cabral, and others.

Such an analysis recommending even stronger US support for third world authoritarianisms, arises if one closes one’s eyes to the real reason behind third world people’s hostility to western powers, including on the Ukraine War; and this lies in their opposition, whether informed or instinctive, to western imperialism based on their lived experience. And third world governments, including even authoritarian ones allied to the US, are often forced to take cognisance of this fact, which is why they express sympathy for Russia in the Ukraine War.

On the other side, thanks inter alia to the barrage of propaganda to which they are subjected through the corporate-controlled media, of which the NYT piece under discussion is itself an example, public opinion in the west is manipulated into supporting imperialism.

This fact however is changing, as is clear from the spate of strikes that workers in the European Union, are currently engaged in, to protest against the erosion in their living standards through inflation, for which they blame the Ukraine War with good reason. The prolongation of this war, they realise, is entirely because of the actions of their own governments.

What is significant however is the large-scale betrayal of the people in the west by their political parties, barring a few exceptions, which have lined up behind the US. Their support for the US has gone to a point where even the revelation by Seymour Hersh that the US was responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, in order to scuttle any possibility of Germany obtaining its gas from Russia even in the future, has caused not a flutter; it has been more or less blocked out by the media not only in the US but also in the European Union.

This complete ignoring of the interests of the people by political parties, including by parties that claim to speak on behalf of the working class and have traditionally enjoyed the support of the working class, is reminiscent of the eve of the First World War, when the leadership of the Second International in each belligerent country supported the war effort of “its own bourgeoisie”. When war credits were being voted in the German parliament in 1914, the mighty Social Democratic Party of Germany which had as many as 86 daily newspapers, voted in favour. The sole vote against was by Karl Liebknecht who had then gone on to found the German Communist Party before being martyred along with Rosa Luxemburg.

Today it is not just the Social Democrats, but even large swathes of the radical European Left, that stand behind the German government’s support for Ukraine against Russia. They put forward two arguments, one general and one specific. The general argument states that, far from the war being an outcome of western imperialism, the west is backing Ukraine in a war against Russian imperialism, that Russia is an aggressive imperialist power.

But even if we ignore the entire background to the current war, namely, the “maidan” coup against Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, engineered by the American “neo-cons”, and the subsequent conflict in eastern Ukraine because of its suppression of the Russian-speaking majority, there is one simple fact that shows who is responsible for the war. The Minsk agreement which could have prevented the war and which Russia had agreed to and adhered to, was torpedoed by the English and the Americans. In fact, it now turns out from Angela Merkel’s admission (which she has subsequently withdrawn because it was embarrassing to the west), that the Minsk agreement was motivated entirely to buy time for Ukraine so that it could properly arm itself. Accepting the Minsk agreement as Russia did can hardly be considered a symptom of Russian imperialism.

The specific argument states that since Russia invaded Ukraine, it must be held squarely responsible for the ongoing war. This too however lacks substance; while invasion is not to be endorsed, it cannot be seen in isolation from the entire set of events that constitute its background. The importance of the overall context was underscored by Lenin in 1915 when he had written in a resolution on the First World war: “The question of which group dealt the first military blow or first declared war is immaterial in any determination of the tactics of socialists” (quoted in The Delphi Initiative, May 6). And the present context is one of expansion eastwards by western imperialism.

A question may be raised: why should Russia be afraid of any such eastward expansion of imperialism? Why should it read anything sinister into such expansion? The answer lies in the tendency of imperialism to break up large countries into smaller fragments so as to dominate them more comprehensively. This tendency which had first manifested itself in the case of Yugoslavia, would be even more pronounced in the case of Russia which is also very rich in natural resources, especially natural gas and to a lesser extent oil. Besides, if Russia gets fragmented, or otherwise dominated, then the way becomes clear for imperialist domination of the many Central Asian republics which are also rich in mineral resources. Imperialist aggressiveness vis-à-vis China too has a very similar motivation, of fragmenting it into insignificance. A country like India incidentally has much to worry about from this tendency of imperialism.

At present of course, among other factors, because of this very aggressiveness vis-à-vis Russia, imperialist hegemony itself is under threat. The “neo-con”-inspired imperialist strategy of seeking world dominance is coming a cropper precisely because of its very aggressiveness. But that is an inevitable consequence of its ambitious project; from the fact that it is coming a cropper, one should not infer its absence. One should not in other words conclude from its failure that this ambitious project was never there to start with. And the people of the third world have rightly seen this project for what it is, which is why there is so much support for Russia.

The Attention Industry: From Marketing and Advertising to Mass Media

By Marcus Kahn

When CocaCola flashes a vibrant video clip of a family clinking bottles, what are they doing? How about a car commercial with a movie star that talks more about the feeling of driving the car than its reliability? Or the targeted advertisements on the sidebar on your Facebook page? Are these corporations trying to inform you by presenting logically structured information? The obvious answer is “Of course not. They’re selling you something.” The more sinister, but equally accurate wording argues that the advertiser is trying to manipulate your decision-making paradigm by strategically feeding you sensory data.

The attention industry is tolerated by most Americans, largely because we don’t have a choice. We were all raised on commercials, and it’s gotten to the point where we forget we have a right to cognitive autonomy. If you talk to your parents, they are sure to have a trove of old jingles from companies that no longer exist, and a few especially catchy ones from companies that still do. The mental process that associates a jingle with a feeling is the same one that keeps the Pledge of Allegiance in your head after all these years, and fills your belly with warmth when you hear the Star Spangled Banner. Advertising seems different than propaganda because it’s coming from so many sources, rather than one clear institutional distributor, but the mechanisms are the same. Strategically expose a viewer or reader to certain information in order to guide the formation of their beliefs and actions. And the implications of this practice extend far beyond your T.V. screen.

Manufacturing Consent

In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky explicate the development and aims of the public relations (advertising) industry and link it to the increasing sophistication of political propaganda distribution in the 20th century.

Advertisers create uninformed consumers who make irrational decisions, contravening one of the fundamental principles of market economics (that economic decisions are driven by informed consumers behaving rationally). For instance, if CocaCola was trying to inform a rational consumer, they would talk about the health implications of their product and the features that distinguish their product from that of their competitors. Instead they surround their product with image and rhetoric, generating an abstraction that can be widely disseminated. If Lincoln Motors was trying to appeal to your logical side, they’d feature an ‘expert’ or a series of statistics that prove a Lincoln sedan is a superior investment. But they don’t. Instead Matthew McConaughey says sexy things in sexy ways, and people are seduced into their purchase.

In the same vein, mainstream media outlets create an uninformed electorate who makes irrational decisions. Take Fox News. On the establishment left it is commonly understood that Fox News uses sensationalism, intense selectivity, and slant to alter their viewership’s perception of current events and policy. It is also understood to a lesser degree that these viewers support administrations and consequently policies that don’t support their best interests. Tax reform comes to mind as the most obvious example. The liberal intellectual class also perceives the establishment right as serving the interests of large multinational corporations, traditionally identifying oil companies and military contractors, but more recently the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Fox fights tooth and nail to divert attention away from these issues to focus on such pressing matters as the almost hysterical defense of perceived American culture and values.

But there is little self-reflection on the part of the liberal intellectual class as to the sensationalism, intense selectivity, and slant used to divert their attention away from pressing issues. These issues, if addressed in policy and action, would threaten the primacy of the corporations who consume and hoard disproportionate amounts of resources and also guide policy and decision making.

The evidence is on the front page of mainstream newspapers every day. Or rather it isn’t. Climate change doesn’t get nearly the coverage it deserves. A recent article in the L.A. Times even cited an academic who argued for the reversibility of the trend, though overwhelming scholarship suggests its disastrous inevitability. Many large corporations would have to undergo expensive overhauls or be abandoned altogether in order to contend with the restrictions of radical climate policy, and the minimal and slanted coverage even in a supposedly left-leaning periodical like the Los Angeles Times is reflective of an attempt to divert public attention away from a pressing issue.

Wealth inequality as a structural flaw inherent to capitalism is never supported in print, and presidential candidates who advocate for a radical departure from the doctrinal status quo are given minimal coverage and dismissed as idealistic, ineffective, or worse. On the other hand, corporate executives who have accumulated obscene amounts of capital are often painted as societal leaders and their opinions are given weight and legitimacy, though their interests differ radically from the vast majority of the publication’s readership. A recent article in the Washington Post, titled “A wealth tax isn’t the best way to tax the rich” questioned the effectiveness of establishing a wealth tax on the grounds that it would be hard to value assets and that it would encounter constitutional opposition. Despite the more fundamental questions surrounding the construction of the U.S. constitution and the landed interests it was meant to promote, there is a more obvious problem with this analysis. If it’s so easy to value my assets and tax me, why aren’t their preexisting mechanisms in place to value and tax the wealthiest members of our society?

The media’s coverage of American aggression abroad is a topic that Chomsky has covered extensively in numerous books and lectures. Much like wealth inequality and climate change, American aggression is portrayed with remarkable similarity across the limited political spectrum of the mainstream media. To take a particularly egregious example, during and after the American attack on Vietnam, the mainstream media portrayed the ‘mission’ as a tactical blunder undertaken with the best intentions, a sincere but poorly executed attempt to spread democracy. However the public and internal records paint a dire picture, where the ‘war’ itself amounted to genocide and was preceeded by nearly a decade of U.S. backed terrorism and repression. American policy consistently ignored the peace sought on both sides of the developing conflict, prioritizing an ultimate ‘victory’ which involved Vietnam’s complete submission to the political and economic dictates of the United States.

American war crimes and international violations are studiously ignored across the board, whether they take place in POW camps during World War II, in bombings over the skies of Indochina, coups and military operations sponsored by the U.S. in Central America, and the list goes on. Covert operations and military aid to oppressive autocratic regimes that were often propped up by the U.S. in the first place are given little to no space or critical evaluation. And the very reasonable American public opinions on such trivial matters as military spending and military interventionism is ignored. The mainstream media’s coverage of foreign affairs generates the sort of patriotic fervor and conditioned fear that blinds Americans to the human and financial costs of warfare and aggression abroad. In the current climate as in years past, fear of Russian and Chinese state and economic power is often the subject of intense journalistic focus, greasing the wheels for the ceaseless operation of the military-industrial complex as it is justified in print and on the air over and over again.

The consistency among corporately-owned news outlets that claim vast political differences cannot be overemphasized. Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model provide a convincing framework for explaining this phenomenon. The network of associations that define media ownership and stewardship of these corporate outlets sheds further light on the complex interplay of power that exists at the top of the corporate world.

Media Ownership and Stewardship

Explicit ownership of a news outlet no longer has sole explanatory power in analyzing how a media outlet behaves. Arthur O. Sulzberger may have some say in what is published in the New York Times, but there is a dense network of corporate relationships that bolsters the institution and guides its decision making. Each mainstream media outlet is not only owned by an individual, family or parent corporation, but also advised by a group of representatives from some of the largest corporations in the American lexicon.

The Sulzberger family has owned the New York Times since 1896, which should send up some red flags. But The New York Times Company Board of Directors also has members associated with McDonald’s, Verizon, Nike, Facebook, Expedia, Etsy, Sony, Pandora, as well as a visiting professor of Rhetoric and the Art of Public Persuasion at the University of Oxford.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon owns the Washington Post. You’ll find board members associated with General Motors, Xerox, Johnson and Johnson, Berkshire Hathaway, a $70bn investment-fund, a large insurance company, and SurveyMonkey.com, which I imagine is capable of gathering massive amounts of data on public opinion.

The Los Angeles Times is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong, the president of SoftBank investment fund, which nets $32bn in sales every year and is a virtual god in the world of tech investment. I couldn’t find a board of directors for the Los Angeles Times online.

I won’t bother looking into Fox. Everyone knows how that will turn out.

The mechanisms used to manipulate public opinion have gotten infinitely more sophisticated since William Randolph Hearst’s time, though control of the mainstream media today is similarly plutocratic. In the age of big data, the aim and ability to manipulate public opinion should come across as a terrifying feature of the American public discourse. Take Facebook, for example. It is clear how much power even a foreign government can have on American public opinion, regardless of whether or not Trump actively contributed to the Russian misinformation effort. I shudder to think about the powerful effect corporations and other powerful institutions will have on the outcome of this election using the mainstream media.

Conclusion

In the same way that advertisers manufacture the desire for their product by feeding you sensory data, corporately owned news outlets manufacture consent for harmful government policies by publishing information strategically. What’s scarier than the monopolistic bent of marketing-heavy corporations is the transformation of corporate-political propaganda into a hard science. Poll after poll, study after study, has helped to refine the art of public persuasion. This might not seem relevant during a contentious presidential election. Just mute the TV during commercials, right? But the science under development in the public relations industry has always shared close ties with corporate power, and by connection media and politics.

There doesn’t need to be a grand conspiracy. There doesn’t have to be a dark room full of whispered commands. But there is an identifiable pattern of power and influence that permeates the mainstream media; a pattern that can be reframed as a centuries-long marketing campaign to suit the interests of a global class of plutocrats.

Corporations donate to election campaigns for the same reason they place representatives on the boards of major media outlets. They want control over policy and control over public opinion. And though there are a lot of different organizations competing for this privileged access to media and governmental influence, their interests are often aligned. They cooperate across the limited political spectrum of American media to temper rising racial and class awareness.

Though it is subtle, you can identify it with the right questions. Why does the mainstream media only cover a social movement like the Civil Rights Movement and the resistance to the Vietnam War, or more recently the Black Lives Matter or #MeToo movements when they become too powerful to ignore? Why isn’t economic inequality, nuclear proliferation, racial inequality, or climate change the front page story every day, when they’re clearly the most dire threats to the vast majority of people in the short and long-term? Advocating strongly for these issues goes against the best interests and likely the nature of a small yet powerful class of business super-elites. They cooperate to varying degrees on key issues producing a remarkable degree of consistency across the spectrum, from the New York Times to Fox News.