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A Century Of Self By Adam Curtis


ishvar2

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This link may interest you.

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/02/020403_de_Media_Century.html

Focusing heavily on the machinations of public relations guru Edward Bernays, the BBC2 series, The Century of the Self, began its second programme with this account of post-war U.S. history:

"Politicians and planners came to believe that Freud was right to suggest that hidden deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had lead to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again, they set out to find ways to control the hidden enemy within the human mind." (The Century of the Self - The Engineering of Consent, BBC2, March 24, 2002)

It is a remarkable claim, and one that could only be taken seriously in a culture that has been largely stripped of political awareness. In fact post-1945 (like pre-1945) "politicians and planners" set out to +promote+ dangerous and irrational desires and fears in the service of profits and power, not peace. Similarly, far from setting out to "stop it ever happening again", post-war U.S. policies generated repetitions of Nazi-style barbarism throughout the Third World.

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Thanks for the link! Fascinating.

When I was studying psychology a while ago, you got the idea that people had fathomed out various mechanism at play in human psychology and various agencies (esp. governments) were manipulating them to control society.

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Thanks for the link MJ.

Totally agree with the link that the documentary the only touched the surface of the issue with respect to US terror by proxy.

This line is telling:

The BBC's failure to mention the horrific consequences of U.S. policy in Guatemala might be dismissed as an isolated oversight. But in fact it is part of what John Pilger describes as the "unspoken rule of reporting whole societies in terms of their usefulness to western 'interests' and of minimising and obfuscating the culpability of 'our' crimes". (Pilger, 'Should we go to war against these children?', New Statesman, March 21, 2002)

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