The Writing on the Wall

In 1989, Noam Chomsky claimed that during the, “Revolutionary War period…there was vicious repression of dissident opinion.” These early repressive measures were signs of future policy, and perhaps too a portent for the design and implementation of societal norms to come. 

The late historian Howard Zinn supports Chomsky’s view, and arms us with the historical fact that in a short while, only “…seven years after the First Amendment became part of the Constitution, Congress passed a law very clearly abridging the freedom of speech” in America. Passed under John Adam’s administration, the Sedition Act of 1798 made it illegal to say anything “false, scandalous and malicious” against the President, Congress or the government.

The passage of the Sedition Act of 1798 conveniently served Congress in its earliest days, allowing for unprecedented control over speech in America. Rooted in the British common law of “seditious libel,” this specific act allowed Congress to legally punish an offender after committing his or her crime; in other words, expressing their dissent. Concerning the consequences of this act, Zinn is of the opinion that, “since punishment after the fact is an excellent deterrent to the exercise of free expression, the claim of ‘no prior restraint’ itself is destroyed.” It is not too much to consider this legislation a major detriment. 

Today we may naively suspect Congress as apprehensive when it comes to abridging too transparently the freedoms afforded us by the Bill of Rights. It may not necessarily be the modus operandi of legislators nowadays to be as flamboyant in their legislative powers as they were in 1798. But if this 18^th century act concerned speech in general, it invariably affected other societal components like the media. And if freedoms regarding speech have markedly changed, it is important to question how something like the media has also been retooled.

We may very well consider the fact that centuries have passed since the American Revolution, and that the delivery of media has changed over the centuries. This does not mean, however, that the media’s function has changed as drastically as say, the pamphleteering of Thomas Paine in contrast to the ‘status updates’ one encounters on Facebook. Something like the automobile has also changed over the years. Nevertheless, it remains a vehicle.

Regarding change in the media, Chomsky argues that, “mechanisms today are much more subtle” in assuring the repression of dissident opinion. His book Manufacturing Consent espouses the ‘Propaganda Model’. This model reveals that the typical opinion in the United States is that we have a media, “which must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the right of the people to know, and to help the population assert meaningful control over the political process.” Chomsky’s ‘Propaganda Model’ exposes our media to be one which, in reality, “will present a picture of the world which defends and inculcates the economic, social and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate the domestic economy, and who therefore also largely control the government.” The media then remains useful for the powerful elite, and releases them from the need to control by force. Thus, it allows them to control the public’s conscious.  

Chomsky states that this very philosophy has been at work publically for over 300 years in “Anglo-American democratic thought”— since the English Civil War in the 1640s. Charles II was restored as king in 1660, but the politics had changed countrywide. In 1689, the constitutional monarchy was adopted along with a Bill of Rights. Chomsky avers that the recognition of a need to control what people think when they can no longer be herded by force has, in the United States, “reached its apogee.” 

Given the fact that the media serves a purpose whether its purpose is considerably disputable or not, it does imbue public opinion, and it does hold some sway over the course of politics. If what Chomsky has argued nationwide for decades is true—that, newspapers and other news sources are lucrative because of their ability to sell their readership, and to sell it purposefully—and if the nature of this beast is as historically evident as Zinn makes it out to be, then we can reasonably ask if this media serves our collective interest at all. If sales mean profit and if the spectrum of opinion is designed albeit varied in nature, then selling readership can help to assure how power is maintained. Understanding this connection makes it difficult to obfuscate a public opinion which directly lends itself to the kind of stories which appear, how they are written, and in whose interest they are presented.

The ‘Propaganda Model’ can help us to consider the fact that where popular consent is both maintainable and profitable, the press will indeed present what is self-serving. Chomsky presses the simple and commonsensical view that a media so lucrative and secure would not go against its own interest in its reporting. The dynamic is precise here, and sales make evident the parallel. Chomsky says that, “…in fact, very often a journal that’s in financial trouble will try to cut down its circulation, and what they’ll try to do is up-scale their readership, because that increases advertising rates.”  The more ‘informed’ the readership is, and the more powerfully privileged which that readership happens to be, the more certain or predictable the destiny of popular consent will be. 

This dreadful, servile press system reports bona fide what continues to immure the history of public opinion and consent.  Given its manner of subsistence, to consider the press as ‘free’ is one thing; to freely accept what the press reports, creates or distorts, is something altogether different. It shapes the destiny of popular control.  

Seriously considered, the ‘Propaganda Model’ can have some foreseeable and troublesome consequences for the everyday paradigm of America’s daughters and sons. It is probable that the majority of persons in the U.S. would neither be able nor willing to admit that they unknowingly ensconce an ignorance which shapes their politics and society. They no doubt would wish to deny their ignorance or find the thought perverse. But once unveiled, it ought to sound the alarm. 

Thanks to a history of paternalism, a history where the disenfranchised have been suppressed by a government which gears itself towards the preservation of unevenly distributed wealth, and also toward the tiny echelons of power which assume the position of the country’s overseers, the great population of the most powerful country in the world might begin to find itself guided like a corralled hog to its trough and slop. And thanks to the ever present, reoccurring shibboleths of our self-proclaimed democratic discourse, the most powerful country guarantees for itself, its people, inequality. 

Let the mythology shrouding the Founding Fathers perish. Zinn indicates that, “…they did not want a balance, except one which kept…a balance among the dominant forces…” The Founding Fathers did “not want an equal balance between slaves and masters, propertyless and property holders, Indians and white.” They most certainly did not consider balance or equality between men and women. Zinn also discusses the shrewdness of our forbearers: “They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power…they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support of a new, privileged leadership.”

Our public conscious may be amnesic and abetted by a scandalous media, one rooted largely in a press that reports what is best for the status quo and therefore reports what is also best for the upper echelons of society. It would be impossible, then, for everything America historically experiences to be as providential as it appears in grade school textbooks nationwide. 

Let us consider Lincoln as good proof of a non-existent American history guided by messianic and righteous figures. His presidency is also proof that media during the time of the Civil War was presenting precisely what Chomsky’s ‘Propaganda Model’ predicts: an array of opinions. Lincoln writes in 1862 to Horace Greeley, then editor of the New York Tribune, that, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it…What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save this Union…” 

If one recalls their 5^th grade history text, one would also recall the popularly, collective historic analysis and perspective of Lincoln’s presidency as portrayed in that text. One may find what Zinn labels as Lincoln’s distinction “between his ‘personal wish’ and his ‘official duty’” not to be in accord with the palatable, popular memory of Lincoln and his presidency. Certainly few can recall the fact that "...those daring to criticize Lincoln's policies would be put in jail without trial--perhaps thirty thousand political prisoners."

Some may confront a different paradigm of such an icon as Lincoln with an outright averse reaction. Then again, we are considering the history of a country subservient to the powerful elites, a country whose first president was the richest man in America. History viewed thus makes the vicious repression of dissident opinion during the time of the Revolution completely understandable. It makes intelligible the media’s role today. 

The point to be made when seeking a more honest and democratic press and media (and perhaps a more realistic approach to history too) is not to point out that a certain President preserved the Union or that he was the chief aggressor in a civil war. The best excuse we have for disabusing ourselves of so many interests which serve to maintain elite power is, ultimately, to be free. 

If this is true—that we desire to be free—then the grand underpinning is the assumption that a desire for truth and freedom exists. However, to foment truth and freedom may require of us a decline in overall hubris. This may only be feasible once if our dominant paradigm is subverted, and beings to shift. Let it not be said of us as Karl Marx said of his fellow Germans in Modern Europe: “Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over our eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.”

Citations:
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492-present. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Print.
Chomsky, Noam, Peter R. Mitchell, and John Schoeffel. Understanding Power: the Indispensable Chomsky. New York: New, 2002. Print.