Open Conspirators

100 years isn’t so very long. Anyone past the age of 30 knows how fast a decade goes past, and it’s only 10 of those. Yet it is long enough to replace the entire population of Earth barring a few centenarians. The oldest verified lifespan ever, Jeanne Calment (1875-1997), was 122, so let’s allow 130 years to eliminate every last straggler; claims for higher ages crop up, but so far have been unconvincing. The cultural elite turns over much more frequently than that – for most practical purposes 50 years since the early part of one’s lifespan is consumed by education and the late segment by survival. True, there are exceptional teen prodigies as well as nonagenarian overachievers (e.g. Henry Kissinger), but there is a vanishingly small chance of the same person being both.

The musings of previous elites are often a curious mix of the still relevant and the obsolete. Those merely 100 years old (more or less) were at a time when modern industrial economies were well-established as were the core elements of modern life. Many of those musings – not by rabble-rousers but by respected intellectuals – are unsettlingly honest. Examples are two books I read earlier this week, both originally from 1928: The Open Conspiracy by HG Wells, and the Propaganda by Edward Bernays.

Starting with the title, it is hard to imagine a book better designed to confirm the worst fears of conspiracy theorists than The Open Conspiracy. Yet, the book needs to be seen in context. World War I had been such a colossal calamity that it convinced many people including HG that the world could not go on as before with its old national and religious rivalries. Without a “New World Order” the ongoing advance in the science and technology of war threatened civilization itself. All the while, that same science and tech held a potential for a new egalitarian prosperity. HG saw a solution in the evolution of a broadly socialist global governance. He rejected doctrinaire Marxism, which was so 19^th century, “But as soon as the Socialist or Communist can be got to realize that his repudiation of private monopolization is not a complete programme but just a preliminary principle, he is ripe for the ampler concepts of the modern outlook.” HG foresaw governance and economic organization run on a “scientific basis” by enlightened folk such as himself. “It [the Open Conspiracy] does not want to destroy existing controls but either to supersede or amalgamate them into a common world directorate.” The duties of these future social-scientist/directors will include eugenics: “There is a clear hope that, later, directed breeding will come within his scope.” The primary strategy of the Open Conspiracy is propaganda: spread the mores and values consistent with this new society through education, re-education, and persuasion. Change in the correct direction necessarily will follow. Whether one finds HG’s Conspiracy appealing or appalling, it is at least…well…Open. Except for eugenics, which is no longer fashionable (aloud anyway), these views are far from absent among the current crop of Western intellectuals.

It is no surprise that Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) quotes HG Wells in his classic book Propaganda, which describes the tools that every persuader and re-educator needs. Bernays doesn’t use the term “propaganda” in a pejorative sense, but in its technical neutral sense; the term is independent of whether the propagated information is true, false, helpful, or harmful. He had plenty of first-hand experience with propaganda in his work for governments and businesses, making especial use of what we nowadays would call “cool by association.” On behalf of tobacco companies he organized Torch of Liberty Brigade marches that helped popularize cigarettes among women by associating them with suffragists. He pioneered the modern PR news release that manipulates news media into treating advertising as legitimate news. He saw the possibilities of new media and of inherent messages in them: “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today.” He was well aware that truth wasn’t a central tenet of the toolkit: “But even supposing a certain propaganda is untrue or dishonest, we cannot on that account reject the methods of propaganda as such.” Bernays had no qualms about any of it. On the contrary. He saw the work of the few manipulating the many as essential and beneficial: “Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds 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.”

True enough, trouble can arise where a free (or relatively free) press propagandizes in opposing directions. This can disrupt that smoothly functioning society. He acknowledges this but concludes nonetheless, “Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help bring order out of chaos.”

Surprisingly, one issue Bernays does not address is the risk of propagandists being taken in by their own propaganda, an all too common eventuality with dire consequences in his own day and serious ones in our own. A nephew of Sig should have recognized the danger. Perhaps he did, but for propagandistic reasons passed over it.

Overall, both books are stunningly candid. Whatever one thinks of their messages, that was and is their value.

The Offspring: Conspiracy of One